We can make all the philosophical and scientific arguments that anyone might want, but ultimately what it all reduces to is a simple question: do women have autonomous control of their bodies or not? Even if I thought embryos were conscious, aware beings writing poetry in the womb (I don’t, and they’re not), I’d have to bow out of any say in the decision the woman bearing responsibility has to make.

I think that’s the only reasonable position to take: it is a decision by the host, who bears all of the obligations, and it is not right for others, who will not have to carry that same burden, to dictate what may be done.

How about a thought experiment? Scientists are supposed to like that sort of thing. Imagine that an alien species envelops the earth in a cloud of infectious DNA, and little needles carrying embryos rain down on us. If you’re struck by one, you’ll start growing an alien cyst in your body; it will fester for a bit less than a year, draining you of energy and making movement awkward, before rupturing and releasing a semi-autonomous intelligent creature. This process kills roughly 20 in 100,000 infected individuals, so it only has a small but very real chance of being lethal. The released creature is also going to demand approximately 20 years of full time care from its host.

Just to add an ironic twist, by some peculiar quirk of physiology, human women are totally resistant to the infection, so only men experience it.

Another unique feature of the alien cyst is that it is capable of communication. Shortly after infection, it extends a small neuronal process directly into the host’s brain, and begins talking — reciting alien history, literature, and culture. It’s fascinating stuff. Scholars, the military, and the government have a serious interest in compelling all the infected individuals to carry the cysts and share their information.

Of course, there is also a very simple surgical procedure to remove the cyst at any time, with very little risk; there are also drugs — you take one pill, and the cyst is expelled from your body, relatively painlessly.

What do you do? Personally, I’d find it extremely interesting to have a conversation with an alien intelligence, and if infected, I’d be tempted to keep it. I’m also financially stable with good health care, so I could probably cope with the financial burden, and would get the medical assistance to minimize any risk.

On the other hand, though, if I were more insecure economically, or had risk factors that made carrying the cyst more dangerous, or simply did not want to support this alien entity (maybe I have more interesting and important things to do with my life), who are you to tell me that I do not have the right to resist this invasion? Maybe it has brilliant things to whisper to me; maybe it will be unbearably adorable once the cyst breaks; maybe society is saying it really wants me to share the words of the alien; but ultimately, it ought to be my decision to make the sacrifices necessary to carry this creature. And if it is unwanted, it should be my right to end it. Who are you to tell me that the life of this parasite is more valuable than my own?

Being ordered about what I’m allowed to do with this infection would also be particularly galling if the people most insistent about it also happened to be a group of people who were totally immune from any possibility of ever having to host an alien themselves.

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I agree with the right to bodily autonomy and privacy. I’m simply advocating that the right to life be extended to conception or thereabouts.

You really need to find a new record. This one is broken.
This has been mentioned at least a dozen times already in this thread, but here we go again: even if a fetus has all the rights possessed by every human being, that still doesn’t give it the right to use a woman’s body. Even if a fully grown Mozart were dwelling inside the body of a woman, he still wouldn’t have the right to use her body. This is what you keep ignoring, probably because you don’t have an argument to bring to bear against it. Bodily autonomy does not give one human being the right to use or live off of another human being. Or have you forgotten that a fetus depends on the body of a woman for survival? Fetuses do not have the right to use the body of a woman. That’s not a right granted by bodily autonomy. That’s a special right that people like you want them to have.

Even if the “right to life” was extended to conception, it would not automatically give zygotes the right to a woman’s body. Abortion is not unjust killing. The right to life is only the right not to be unjustly killed and does not include a positive right to use the body of another without consent.

I have the right to life, but that does not give me the right to occupy your body and threaten your wellbeing. And if I do, and I refuse to leave, you would be within your rights to remove me. Even if I die without the use of your organs as life support

I’m simply advocating that the right to life be extended to conception or thereabouts.

Yeah, you are simply advocating it, because you can’t make a case for it, more than “I just wanna.” And you are forgetting that the right to life is, practically speaking, the same as the right to a body, and there we are back at body autonomy.

But fine, let’s give a fetus a right to life. How, exactly, are you going to detect conception? How are you going to determine whether the …. come to think of it, what are you even going to call the woman involved? I mean, if she doesn’t want a baby, you can hardly call her a mother. So how can you tell if the woman is taking good care of the fetus? What is good care of a fetus, for that matter? How, precisely, are you going to give the fetus a full and happy life when it is inside a prisoner being force-fed? How much worse can you treat the woman when the pregnancy spontaneously terminates, as most conceptions do, and how do you determine who, if anyone, killed the fetus?

rq
25 August 2014 at 2:42 am
seversky again
What I am arguing for is the extension of the human right to life (as well as bodily autonomy) to the unborn child which is, after all, an individual human being, albeit at a very early stage of development. [bolding mine]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I’m sorry, I can’t seem to laugh any louder on this keyboard. Oh, wait – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Still not enough.
A fetus is an individual human being? Then it should survive just fine on its own. As V S said above, it can go be autonomous over there. Early stage of development or not, no one single person is obligated to care for another or to sacrifice their physical integrity for another. So, scoot, fetus!

“Individual” does not mean the same as “independent”. There are individuals who, as a result of accident or illness, have been left entirely dependent on the care and support of others. They could not survive without it. Do we regard them as any the less individuals because of that dependency?

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them. It’s weird.

An individual who is injured in an accident has managed to survive, already, as a complete, fully formed, sentient and sapient individual. A zygote, not so much, and there is no guarantee that a zygote will *ever* reach it to the embryonic stage, let alone the fetal stage or even birth. An unborn human is a human under construction – and until that construction process is finished, and it can survive as an autonomous individual, it isn’t a person. Sorry.

You and I contain much, much more information, both genetic and otherwise, than a blastocyst. That’s why I can write this column and you can read it, whereas a blastocyst just.. .sits there. Indeed, that is the exactly the point of stem cell research: the stem cells in the blastocyst have not yet acquired the molecular programming required for differentiation, and so they remain pluripotent, awaiting the necessary molecular signals (the information) that will tell them whether to become nerve or muscle, skin or bone.

A blastocyst is nothing more than a little clump of cells, each of them a snippet of DNA surrounded by cytoplasm. But that DNA was later transcribed into RNA, and that RNA was translated into proteins. And some of those proteins were transcription factors that told other cells in the blastocyst what to do, when to divide, where to migrate. Transcription factors regulated the expression of still other transcription factors. Genes were turned on and off with clockwork precision. Some genes were methylated, so they could never be turned on again.

In other words, the genome and the proteome of the blastocyst were changed as the embryo accumulated molecular information that the blastocyst did not have.

The embryo became a fetus, with complex orientations of tissues–loaded with spatial, genetic, biochemical and mechanical information that simply did not exist in the embryo.

The fetus became a child with a nervous system, and that nervous system sucked up information about the world, hard-wiring pathways for vision and movement, learning to make subtle distinctions between this and that, accumulating information that simply did not exist in the fetus.

In other words, the blastocyst launched a genetic program that both extracted and acquired information. It didn’t start out as a human being. It became a human being, with a personality, feelings, attitudes and memories, by accumulating information that was not there before.

Equating a blastocyst with a human being is like equating a brand new copy of an inexpensive spreadsheet program with the priceless databases that you’ll eventually build up with that program. It’s no less ridiculous than saying that a blueprint has the same value as a skyscraper–that it is the skycraper.

No. They are not the same.””

————-

As does embryologist Scott Gilbert:

Genetics

This view states that a genetically unique person begins at conception – a fertilized egg now hosts a complete genome, making it distinct from the sex cells that came before it. This definition has the advantage of saying that a new individual has been created that can be distinct from its parents, but is still limited by the fact that
this embryo is still in an early stage of development and far from viable as an individual.

This view also causes a funny paradox in the case of monozygotic (identical) twins: each twin does not exist as an individual when “its life begins” – that is, when it is conceived as the embryo doesn’t split into two parts until later. This paradox could possibly be resolved by considering the pre-twinning embryo as a disparate entity
from either of the resulting embryos. This is why viewing the formation of life as a continuous process rather than a single event is beneficial.

Instructions for Development and Heredity are NOT all in the Fertilised egg. The view that we are genetically determined by the combination of parental DNA has been shown to fall far short of the complete story. How
the DNA is interpreted can vary greatly affected by things such as the maternal diet. Similarly some development requires certain bacteria to be present. Thirdly, and most surprisingly, the level of maternal care can determine which areas of DNA are ‘methylated’ which radically altershow they are interpreted. As such the view that we are ‘complete but unformed’ at conception is far from accurate. From the moment of fertilisation, the embryo grows as the cells of the fertilised egg multiply. However, there is a problem. How can the DNA be read if the materials needed to read it have not yet been produced? The answer is that they are provided by the mother in the form of mRNA and proteins. The early stages of development are controlled directly by the mother’s genotype for about the first three weeks, in humans, after which the embryo’s DNA takes over.

At eight weeks most of the features of the adult are visible, when it
is ref erred to as a fetus. During the first few weeks, it is neither
male nor female. However, a small group of cells, called the
“indifferent gonads” begin to form, that are capable of becoming ovaries or testicles. At the same time, other internal features of both sexes develop, the Mullerian (female) ducts and the Wolffian (male) ducts.

The Embryo is NOT Safe Within the Womb. Modern research shows that 30% or fewer fertilised eggs will go on to become foetuses. Many of these early miscarriages
are because of abnormal numbers of chromosomes. The view that every fertilised egg is a potential human being is wrong in around 70% of cases.

There is NOT a Moment of Fertilisation when the passive egg receives the active sperm.Again recent research has shown that the previous commonly held view that the fastest sperm races towards the egg and, bingo, we’re up and running is wrong on many levels. Fertilisation is a process taking up to four days. As such there is no magic moment, rather there is a process.

There is NO consensus amongst scientists that life begins at conception.There isn’t even consensus amongst scientists as to whether there’s consensus. However, Scott Gilbert’s paper lists embryologists who support each of the major view points belying the common and oft
repeated assertion that there is consensus amongst embryologists, let alone scientists.

Neurology

Just as death is usually defined by the cessation of brain activity, so the start of life can be defined as the start of a recognisable Electroencephalography[wp] (EEG) pattern from the fetus. This is usually twenty four to twenty seven weeks after conception.

The point of using neurological factors rather than other signs such as a heartbeat is that this is a much more useful indicator from the point of view of science. A heart beats using mostly involuntary muscle movements so is really little different from any other spontaneous motion or metabolic processes. A heartbeat means relatively
little in real terms, although it is more dramatic from an emotive point of view.

The entity created by fertilization is indeed a human embryo, and it has the potential to be human adult. Whether these facts are enough to accord it personhood is a question influenced by opinion, philosophy and theology, rather than by science.

Indeed, the potential for human life can begin very early, but it is personhood that is the sticking point. The question is very much whether the two are equal and therefore happen at the same point. Leaving the answer in the hands of philosophy and opinion however makes the distinction between “life” and “non-life” purely subjective and the answer will be different for everyone. This is the most important fact to bear in mind, particularly when discussing legalities – subjective thoughts cannot and should not be forced upon everyone fairly.””

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources

notice how he casually substituted “resources” for “woman”.

tells you a lot, and not just about the many logical fallacies he uses.

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them. It’s weird.

It only seems like double think because you’re a fucking idiot who-at this point-must be deliberately ignoring the responses you’ve been getting.

1- the vast majority of abortions done after 20 weeks are performed because of genetic abnormalities, or for the health/life of the mother. You’re employing the ‘partial birth’ abortion argument which is fucking stupid, because it doesn’t happen.
2-the child that is existing outside of the woman’s body…? That child has bodily autonomy. That’s why we would be angry if the child were harmed or killed. A fetus does not have bodily autonomy. It cannot because it is residing inside the body of a woman. You keep ignoring the fact that there is a pregnant woman in this equation and she has the right to decide what happens to her body. If she doesn’t want to be pregnant she has the right to not be pregnant.
3- No one. Not you. Not I. Not a fetus. Not a 72 year old man. No one has the right to use a woman’s body. Why can’t you grasp this? You can’t compel me to save your life by giving you a blood transfusion. You cannot compel a woman to sustain a fetus if she doesn’t want to. It’s part of bodily autonomy.

FFS, since you support enslaving women for nine months, do you also want to turn back the clock and enslave black people too?

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think.

That would at least seem better than a kind of not thinking at all. That is, if we’re just going by seeming, instead of being in reality. It strikes me as a little odd that we’re even having this discussion and that you also can’t discuss worth a shit, but I’ve come across odd things before.

I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources

notice how he casually substituted “resources” for “woman”.

It’s not just a dream. I will not sit back and allow the unborn newborns to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids … errr… resources … errr… people.

Nobody is deliberately misinterpreting him. He said what he fucking said. He’s pro-choice because fetuses aren’t writing poetry in the womb and not because women are people who have their own fucking right to not have their body invaded by an unwanted fetus

I must have missed the part where he said that women don’t have the right to abortions. Maybe it was in your head?

Now that’s just plain fucking disingenuous. Seven of Mine quite clearly didn’t say what you claim they said.

Dawkin’s is pro-choice because of the status of the foetus, not because he cares about the rights of the woman. He made that pretty damn clear. Seven of Mine made it pretty damn clear that that’s what they were objecting to. You made it pretty damn clear that you’re not arguing in good faith.

And you have the nerve to claim Dawkins is being misrepresented here, after pulling that whopper? Shame on you.

“Individual” does not mean the same as “independent”. There are individuals who, as a result of accident or illness, have been left entirely dependent on the care and support of others. They could not survive without it. Do we regard them as any the less individuals because of that dependency?

Such individuals do not require the VIOLATION of the BODILY AUTONOMY of their caregivers. And they are not entitled to VIOLATE the BODILY AUTONOMY of another human being even if they require it for survival.

There are individuals who, as a result of accident or illness, have been left entirely dependent on the care and support of others.

And furthermore, EVEN WITH THIS LEVEL of care that does NOT VIOLATE BODILY AUTONOMY, such care is given VOLUNTARILY, and NOT COMPELLED.

It is notable how seversky structures this pathetically worthless analogy. Attention is only given to the fetus-analog (the ill individual), but not a single thought given whatsoever to the woman-analog (the caregiver).

Of course, giving even the slightest attention to that woman-analog utterly destroys the dishonest argument he is trying to make.

1) Ok, you’re pro-choice and you just want to tell me that I’m lucky fetus can’t sing Ave Maria from in there because in that case you would be ok with forcing me to carry the pregnancy.
Um, thanks for sharing, I guess. Could you not talk to me ever again, please? Thanks.

2) You’re really good at thinking up scenarios where you would be ok with forcing me to stay pregnant. I am slightly worried by your enthusiasm.

3) Could you practice your philosophical chops on some topic that isn’t so hot, and where your make believe stories aren’t used by people who want to deny my right to, well, deny my fucking rights?!.
Thanks.

Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought.

Why would we have it removed and killed? If it’s identical to a newborn (albeit still occupying another human’s body) then it’s perfectly capable of existing happily outside of the womb upon induction and birth. There’s no reason to kill a viable fetus once it’s born; that’s infanticide. Presumably the pregnant person wants to end the pregnancy, and is not maliciously trying to kill a baby — it’s about freeing up her body at will, not about making sure some fetus never sees the light of day. You have a weird view of the motivations behind most abortions (or early inductions of labor!) :p

In fact, not to harp endlessly on your stupidity, but that’s precisely what happens with many childbirths; the mother either needs or wants to end the pregnancy at a certain time, she schedules an induction or a c-section, and a bouncing baby is born. This can be due to things like suiting her family’s travel schedule or due to medical necessity such as the development of preeclampsia. Surely you don’t think the labor and delivery nurses then try to kill the baby upon maternal request, even though it’s delivered a little prematurely (and the procedure is not particularly distinct from an abortion)? It’s outside of the mother’s body, and now it no longer needs her consent to exist; the violation of bodily autonomy is resolved on her end, and the baby is perfectly capable of breathing/excreting/digesting on its own so it just does its own thing.

@26: Yeah, it’s a pretty transparent strategy! It also neatly avoids the pertinent distinction between a fetus and a newborn (that inconvenient flesh-cocoon around the fetus that the newborn lacks, which I often call “the mother.”)

chris61, seversky:
Bodily autonomy is an important concept which serves as the bedrock of a woman’s right to choose. Since neither of you is interested in reading the many, many comments in this thread explaining the concept, perhaps you’ll wander off and do some reading on your own. Perhaps you’ll learn something. Maybe, possibly, you’ll both become better human beings, rather than the shitstains you’re both acting like at the moment.

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them. It’s weird.

It’s weird because you made it up. If your loaded-word scenario were actally the case, it would be more than just a little odd.

Yeah, the pro-choice position doesn’t fit neatly into your worldview, but it does make sense. The key item is what we keep telling you; it is up to the woman. As long as the object under discussion is inside her body, it is her body and her choice.

If she somehow feels that she needs to abort in the ambulance on the way to the maternity hospital, well, that is her choice. I might not like it, but that is the price we pay for our rights. By the way, the gun nuts accept school shootings as the price of their freedom to own guns, so go argue that concept with them.

Further, if someone were to force a woman to abort, that would be a violation of her body autonomy, so yeah, this pro-abortion person would be taking her attacker to justice. Conservatives don’t understand that, but then, they don’t understand much.

You really don’t understand anyone else’s position, and I think that you don’t understand your own very well. So let me help you — your caricature of a pro-choice person really sounds like you think we are bonkers, and that is what is wrong with your stance. You think that women are not capable of making good decisions, and that is about all there is to it.

(As for born babies, well, if the doctor decides that a seriously-deformed one should have been born dead, and makes it so before signing a birth certificate, I am fine with that, provided that the mother’s best interests are in mind, and that she picked the doctor. Stealing babies, as the Catholic Church has done, is an abomination. Confusing, no? No, it is about the woman and what she wants, and once the certificate is signed, it is about a new life and what it needs.)

One does live inside the other, and is dependant on the other for survival, granted. This would change the abortion issue considerably. [emphasis mine]

As long as one is living inside the other without permission, then the one living on the inside must go. Because then that person is trespassing, and is liable for their actions, and the person with the uterus is free to rid themselves of the trespasser. Somehow, that still doesn’t change the abortion issue.

chris61

All I’m saying is that since abortion isn’t something a woman does with her body by herself (at least not in the case of a medically safe abortion) then the rights of other people come into play. Women have the (legally protected ) right to exercise their own body autonomy but not that of a nurse or doctor who is morally opposed to abortion.

As far as I know, you’re the only one who has been bringing in the moral status of doctors or nurses. People with uteri go to service providers who are willing to provide abortions (so few…), they don’t go to their local christian doctor and force them at gunpoint to give them an abortion. That pregnant person has every right to seek out the medical assistance they need in order to not be pregnant anymore. The doctor’s morals come into it only to the point where they can refuse but must refer to someone who will do it (as dianne pointed out above).

F.O. @446
Still equating donating money with endangering your body and health. Are you made of money?
Not engaging you anymore.

No, you are not responsible for how others deliberately misinterpret your positions in order to further their own nefarious agendas.

Yes as a matter of fact you ARE, to the extent that the “deliberate” misinterpretation of your words is foreseeable. And if that foreseeability is high enough, you can in fact be charged with the crime of incitement.

Furthermore, I have only your dubious and unsupported assertion that these are “misinterpretations” of your words at all, and not the effect you intended all along. Nor have you earned, at all, the privilege of such trust.

What a disgustingly dishonest argument you’ve made to compare what you and Dawkins have done to “criticism” of the president. It is not equivalent AT ALL. It is in fact closer to the end of the spectrum that includes declaring the president to be a baby killer and then begging for some “patriot” to “stop him” to “save the babies.”

Now that’s just plain fucking disingenuous. Seven of Mine quite clearly didn’t say what you claim they said.
Dawkin’s is pro-choice because of the status of the foetus, not because he cares about the rights of the woman. He made that pretty damn clear. Seven of Mine made it pretty damn clear that that’s what they were objecting to. You made it pretty damn clear that you’re not arguing in good faith.

It’s worse than that because Dawkins said what he said in response to PZ explicitly making the bodily autonomy argument. It’s even in the OP:

Blogger said woman’s rights over own body extend to abortion even if fetus conscious & writing poetry in womb. I profoundly disagree.

There’s not even anything to interpret, correctly or otherwise. He explicitly said that a woman’s bodily autonomy only extends as far as the fetus’s consciousness. Granted I think that’s probably because he has no fucking clue about the reasoning behind how we establish who has what rights and which rights trump which and when and so on but that’s all the more reason for him to shut his fucking yap about it.

seversky, even if you have the right to life (which you do; which foetuses, not being persons, do not) you do not have the right to parasitise my body. Not even if you write poetry or play the violin.

I might very well choose to preserve your life by donating blood or even costly bone marrow, but it would be my choice. To argue otherwise is to argue that I get to strap you down, anaesthetise you (lets be humane, why don’t we) and help myself to one or even both of your kidneys against your will to save my life irrespective of any cost to your health or even your life.

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them. It’s weird.

Yeah, it is weird, isn’t it? But then again preposterous fictional bullshit often is.
A few days back before a natural birth, the fetus is viable….if the pregnancy is interrumpted, the fetus doesn’t die as a consequence of it.
Abortions don’t kill fetuses. The inability of non-viable fetuses to survive on their own without using somebody else’s body is what kills fetuses. Those that are developed enough to be autonomous don’t die as a result of being aborted.
This might be helpful: Say there is someone who has lost liver function that requires a transplant and there is only one other person who is compatible. That person chooses not to donate. When the person in need of a transplant dies it won’t be because they got murdered by the person who refused to donate, it will be because their liver doesn’t function and their body is unable to sustain itself. It’s the shitty liver that kills…not the person refusing to donate. Otherwise we´d all be guilty of murder because there sure as fuck is someone out there who would need something from us that we are not giving.

My mother had two c-sections. My brother and i had to be surgically removed from her uterus at an agreed upon date. The pregnancy was artificially interrupted. My brother and i are both alive.

No I don’t support the Catholic position. I think doctors or nurses who are morally opposed to abortion should be legally obligated to refer but as I understand it, they aren’t. Or at least in some states they aren’t. The point I was trying to make is that no matter how much you think abortion should be only about a woman’s right to choose, legally it isn’t.

The point I was trying to make is that no matter how much you think abortion should be only about a woman’s right to choose, legally it isn’t.

Oh please. Are you seriously trying to suggest that this is news to anyone? The point is that the law in USAnianland is seriously fucked up; that it is only somewhat less so in some parts of the world, and even more so in many. And that nonsense about foetal personhood is deliberately being used to fuck the law up even more, resulting directly in enormous suffering and in the deaths of real people – women, not foetuses.

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them. It’s weird.

Ah! There it is, the ‘birth is arbitrary’ square! Stated a bit more verbosely than usual, but that’s it nonetheless.

I therefore (as I get to do in every single thread about abortion) mention the Post Test:

Find a fencepost, a 4×4 wood works best, but steel chain link will do. Walk up to it. Press your cheek against it. This is you experiencing the post being outside of your body.
Now, maneuver yourself so that the selfsame fencepost has been pushed a foot or so into the bodily orifice of your choice. This is you experiencing the post inside of your body.

Do you believe you would have difficulty telling the difference between these two states?

Do you feel this is an arbitrary or subtle distinction?

As crazy as it sounds, women, even with their sensations dulled by their fluffy ladybrains, are also able to distinguish between similar situations when it comes to birth.

Best of all, if ever you find yourself thinking that birth is arbitrary at some point in the future, you need only repeat the Post Test to remind yourself that actually, it isn’t.

I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources.

There are profound differences between a fetus, even a 40 week fetus in a woman in active labor, and a newborn, starting with the obvious one that a newborn isn’t living off anyone else’s body and doesn’t endanger anyone’s life. And if you think a 40 week fetus isn’t endangering anyone’s life, please go read some basic biology texts and come back when you can explain why pre-eclampsia, obstructed labor, PPH, and VTE are bad things.

That being said, no, I don’t think any of us would be up for killing a newborn or allowing it do die because it is a burden on resources. But do you know who is ok with that? Pro-lifers. Yep, the majority of “pro-life” people are Republicans and vote against things like universal health care and immigration reform. Know what happens to a sick or premature newborn who can’t get good care because its parents can’t afford it? Yep, they die. Know what happens to a newborn sent back to a war zone because citizens in the country where its parents sought refuge don’t care how dangerous it is to send them back but are only concerned about “illegals mooching off welfare”? Yep, they die too. Even the healthy ones. So, no, we’re not the ones who are fine with killing babies, but there are people who are not just ok with it but think it actively a good thing. The “pro-life” movement isn’t about saving babies. It’s about controlling women.

One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible.

Let’s leave the “poetry writing fetus” hypothetical for a moment and think about the real world. Why do third trimester abortions happen? Hint: It’s not because women have a sudden whim to end a pregnancy at 39 weeks 6 days GA. Nope. Third trimester abortions are rare, but when they occur, they happen because something bad went wrong. Anencephaly that wasn’t picked up earlier. Fetal demise of one twin and desire to carry the surviving twin long enough to give it the best chance of survival. Life or organ threatening maternal health issues. Trisomies that might have been diagnosed earlier, but where the extent of the damage was not clear until later on. Hydrocephalus, same.

Now, what would happen in the above cases if the fetus was delivered at term instead of aborted? They’d die. Slowly and in pain. The parents would be left with the memory of a baby whose life was nothing but pain instead of the relatively peaceful knowledge that they let the baby go as easily as possible (if that’s what they chose to do: I have no judgement on people who choose otherwise, but it’s not the choice I think I’d make in that situation). The baby might not die right away. Then the parents might have to make decisions about whether to pursue aggressive care or not. Do you think that parents should have the right to decide whether to pursue the most aggressive care possible, even when it’s futile, or to let the baby die naturally, simply keeping it warm and out of pain and letting nature take its course? If they have the right to make that decision for a baby, why not for a fetus?

Two of the examples that I gave in the first paragraph are exceptions to what I wrote in the second paragraph. In the case of the pregnancy threatening the life of the mother, the fetus may or may not survive birth. If it does, then the father, if he’s around, is left to mourn his loss and raise a baby by himself. If both die, he’s just left alone to mourn both. In the case of fetal demise of one twin, most likely the other simply dies of sepsis, possibly the mother as well. In the best case scenario, the twin stays in utero long enough to survive and the parents simply have a premature baby with all the problems that implies instead of a term baby.

I’m simply advocating that the right to life be extended to conception or thereabouts.

“Simply”. As if this were a little technical detail, unrelated to the person within whom the conception is happening.

Valde @460:

I spend the majority of my time debating abortion on the Secular Pro-Life Perspectives blog.

I gave up after a few comments there; I wish I could remember in which comment thread somebody was seriously considering the appropriate penalty for chronic miscarriers who continued having potentially-conceptive sex.

I’m simply advocating that the right to life be extended to conception or thereabouts.

I have a couple of questions for you then:
1. How do you define “life”? If a newly fertilized egg is alive, then obviously brain death is out the window as a definition–what do you propose instead? Do we have to wait until literally every cell dies to declare someone dead? I guess that takes care of the organ donation issue: you can’t donate until the person is dead and you can’t use an organ that doesn’t have live cells so that’s that.
2. Identical twins: Are they really only one person? Which one is the “real” person? What do we do with the other one?
3. Chimeras: Do they get two votes, being really two people?
4. Molar pregnancies and teratomas: Is it murder to remove them? They’re derived from fertilized eggs.
5. Hamster egg assay: I asked it above and you ignored it, probably because you don’t have a good answer. Are fertilized hamster eggs babies with a right to life? They’re fertilized eggs with human DNA.
6. Frozen embryos: Slavery? Do they have to all be thawed and implanted? Right away? Clearly discarding is out, but what about storage? Storage isn’t completely safe-viability decreases over time, so it’s probably at least child endangerment. So much for fertility treatments and allowing infertile couples to have children.
7. Cloning. No one’s done it in humans yet, but that’s mostly because people went squick when we approached the issue. But there’s no particular reason to believe it’s impossible. Every last one of your nucleated cells could, in principle, make a new little you. Does that make normal digestion (where intestinal cells are sloughed off and partially absorbed by the body for nutrition) murder? And you did WHAT with the bodies? That’s disgusting!
8. Miscarriage. Up to 80% of fertilized eggs don’t develop into babies. Most fail to implant or die in the first few weeks of pregnancy, before a “clinical pregnancy” is apparent. Shouldn’t we be spending just a little money on trying to solve this problem? Maybe just a little? Don’t these “babies” have the right to protection from disease as well as murder? Didn’t you just speak unfavorably about killing babies to save resources? Well, then we need to up our spending on research to prevent miscarriage. Massively. We’d better also start screening any woman who might become pregnant for pro-thrombotic states. Sure, it’s expensive, but they might become pregnant and if they have a PTS and become pregnant they are at risk of miscarriage. If it’s a baby from conception on we want to prevent that. And we can. It just takes resources. A modest tax increase, say, 25%, should cover it. You’ve got no problem with increasing government spending on health care in an aspect that will never benefit you, right?

@rq: whether you like me or not is vastly irrelevant.
But yeah, surely I can make a better explanation of the argument.

WHY A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IS NOT NECESSARY:

1) Donating money to certain charities or government programs does save lives.

2) At least many of such lives belongs to people who can write poetry, are or may become geniuses and are in general “worthy”, whatever that means.

3) Every non-poor person, and Dawkins certainly qualifies, has the potential to donate more money than they actually do to to charities.

4) By not donating more of their money, non-poor people are effectively letting die those that could be saved per 1) above.

5) This is socially accepted and in fact considered normal.
I.E. We accept that our selfish choices cost the lives of fully sentient and conscious human beings.

6) This is not a thought experiment. This is what we actually do.
Daily.
Everywhere.
And none (me included) has the slightest problem with it.

7) Why shouldn’t a woman be allowed to do the same, even with a hypothetical fully sentient and conscious fetus?
Especially considering that a pregnancy is a greater sacrifice than a donation to a charity.

TL;DR: According to Dawkins’ argument, if you are not donating most of your money to life-saving charities, you are culpable of as many homicides as that money would save.

What put the idea in my head is the comment after comment about how abortion is nobody’s business but that of the pregnant person.

It shouldn’t be, and you provided no evidence that it shouldn’t be. Why should anybody else make the decision for someone fully human, and capable of making the decision without unnecessary and unwanted input from religious idjits?

All these years, I thought that my body was, you know, mine. Apparently I was mistaken, at least as regards the naughty bits. Tell me, chris61, arbiter of all things legal, now that I’m no longer functioning as a baby machine, do I get my bodily autonomy? Probably not; I expect that menopausal female types don’t actually exist in the Gospel According To chris61.

My daughters, on the other hand… Just don’t get between me and their rights. Grrrrrr.

You mean to tell me that the US government, which has no regard for the bodily autonomy of foreign nationals, American citizens living abroad, and American citizens with high levels of melanin pigmentation in their skins, does not really recognize the bodily autonomy of pregnant American citizens??

Emotionally, it gets a bit blurry. True anecdote (not to be confused with data): my ex-wife and I agreed to try to have a baby. She got pregnant. She spent the first trimester drinking herself into oblivion *but*, when pressed, indicated to me that she was opposed to abortion. She continued with the self-harm (in other areas, too) well into the second trimester at which point she finally accepted that she didn’t want a child and, instead of trying to force a miscarriage (!), she – thank goodness – agreed to an abortion. I can simply say that those months watching my possibily-future child (admittedly a parasite) being…thwarted (for lack of a better word) in utero at the very eariest stages of development were pretty devastating. As was the reality of possibly having a child with FASD and a wife who clearly didn’t want said child…

So again, intellectually, I accept not having any father’s rights with respect to a fetus. But the feeling of helplessness in an abusive situation sucks. Parasite or not.

It also begs a legal question: if (as is proper) the full rights lie with the mother during pregnancy, who bears the legal (and possibly financial) responsibility for proveable and intentional damage done to the fetus during pregnancy if that damage requires additional resources after birth?

If there wasn’t so much stigma surrounding abortion, your wife could have done it sooner with clear conscience and both of you would have been spared the suffering. This is as good reminder that it is not enough to make abortion accessible, everything from sex ed to religious teachings have to accept it as a valid option.

The point I was trying to make is that no matter how much you think abortion should be only about a woman’s right to choose, legally it isn’t.

Some laws in some places are unjust and should be changed. That’s the whole point of having this conversation, since if all the laws were all perfectly just everywhere, there’d be no need to talk about the subject at all.

But one must ask of the dishonest liar, chris61, exactly what the rhetorical purpose of this statement really is.

Is it just a statement of fact, an attempt to inform others?

If so then it betrays a level of ignorant condescension that boggles the mind, that any honest reader could follow these threads for as long as chris61 has and not know that everyone already knows this.

Or could it be an attempt to make an argument?

If so, then note the disgusting authoritarianism that underpins the argument. What is legal must be good, eh? The government, Maker of laws and Provider of Morals, knows best in all things. So keep quiet, you little citizens, and conform.

Either way it is yet for data supporting what we all already know, that the commenter known as chris61 is one pitiful, despicable, excuse for a human being.

Oh also before that Tweet I linked to before, and all those responses to that tweet above, Dawkins brought up Plato and Essentialism

that’s what I get for giving that dude any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. He wrote this long essay about essentialism and how it’s wrong and mostly he didn’t get much wrong on it (except for claiming that race on US government forms is a form of essentialism and that ppl have to pick one category and one category only), so I took it at face value.

Figures that it was just another passive aggressive attack on strawmannish misrepresentations of his critics. Fucking figures.

I agree with the right to bodily autonomy and privacy. I’m simply advocating that the right to life be extended to conception or thereabouts.

why do all these assholes (including Jeff S and RD himself) have such a hard time understanding that this would be ethically irrelevant, because when two equal rights come into conflict, the defender’s rights have priority over the aggressor’s rights, and thus, ethically, a pregnant person would still retain the right to remove a being invading her body?

The other thing that strikes me as a little odd about the pro-choice position is a kind of double-think. I’m pretty sure none of you would dream of casually killing a newborn just because it was a burden on resources. You would try to find other ways to deal with the problem if there was one. Yet roll the tape back a few days to when that child was back in the womb and you would have it removed and killed without a second thought. One day it’s a cute, bouncing baby, a few days earlier and its some sort of icky, cancerous growth to be cut out and disposed as quickly as possible. Yet put the two side-by-side and there would be very little difference between them.

lol. if you “put the two side-by-side”, they’re both in fact newborns.

The part where you literally can’t put a fetus and a newborn side-by-side? that’s the difference. the part where one is inside my body, physically attached to my bloodstream, using my organs; while the other is not impinging on my bodily integrity at all.

Sigh. Severesky didn’t come back to answer my questions. “Pro-life” people are always going on about how they have Right and Science on their side so I was sure that Seversky would come back with a logical and emperically well supported argument for why a fertilized egg is different from any other cell and a perfect definition of “life” that would make calling blastulocysts alive make sense and maybe even an explanation of why twins aren’t a single person. But no. So shocked and disappointed.

I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to this discussion sooner but other issues intervened.

I suppose in this debate I’m “pro-life” although how many people in their right minds are “anti-life”? I don’t appeal to “Right” because I’m not sure what you mean by it. I don’t appeal to science in what is essentially an argument about morality because to do so would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy and we wouldn’t want to do that, would we?

Like most people, I think of human beings as being alive and so are all the different cells of which they’re made. Can I draw bright line between living and non-living? No, I can’t, but to quote the British statesman Edmund Burke,” ” Though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of night and day, still light and darkness are on the whole tolerably distinguishable.”.

I think it also helps to remember that we are not just objects in three-dimensional space but we are also events stretched out through four-dimensional spacetime like Heinlein’s “pink worms”. Physically and psychologically I am not the same as I was ten years ago or twenty years ago or thirty years ago. The great majority of my cells have died and been replaced, some many times over, so I am not the same physically. My life’s experiences have also changed me psychologically over that same time. Yet for all that change there is no discontinuity. Like everyone else alive today, I am one unbroken chain of change and development that can certainly be traced back to my birth but also, crucially, to before then.

If you want to draw a line at birth and say that is where a human begins, you can. If you want to say anything before this is not human and can be killed at will, you can. If you get enough people to agree with you, it will be considered moral and may also become the law of the land. But it will still be arbitrary, an arbitrary point along an unbroken line. You could just as easily draw the line at ten years or twenty years.

We don’t, of course, because we all agree that after birth the child has at least a right to life. The question is, why not before?

It has been argued vehemently here that the woman’s right to privacy, to bodily autonomy and integrity take precedence over all others, that it is paramount. This is nonsense. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights. I is implied by all the other rights because all the others are meaningless without it. What does it mean to say I have the right to freedom of espression if anyone can kill me with impunity to stop me saying something they don’t like? What does the right to the free exercise of religious belief mean if some zealot can throw bomb into a church he considers heretic and walk away scot-free because the heretics have no right to life?

I regard myself as agnostic and atheist in the same sense as Bertrand Russell. I am agnostic because I do not know whether or not there is a God. I am atheist because for all practical purposes I act on the assumption there isn’t one. As far as we can tell so far, we are alone in a very big and very dangerous universe. All we have are each other

And we are the lucky ones. Foe better or worse, we got a shot at experiencing life. Uncounted billions of other potential humans never made it this far. Shouldn’t we be doing whatever to make sure as many others as possible get the same chance rather than giving Nature a hand by killing them off?

It has been argued vehemently here that the woman’s right to privacy, to bodily autonomy and integrity take precedence over all others, that it is paramount. This is nonsense. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights.

Once again, you fail to address the point (one of many, actually) that has been made over and over again (which doesn’t change even if “the right to life is the most fundamental of all rights”-an assertion made with no evidence): no one has the right to use the body of another human being. This. Is. Not. A. Right.
Why can’t you get this?
You can’t demand I give blood to save your life, and fetus can’t use the body of a woman without her consent. No human being who currently exists has that right. No human being has the right to harvest organs from the deceased without prior permission. So bodily autonomy is a right that living and deceased people have, but in your view, pregnant women don’t get it. Their bodily autonomy is trumped by the presence of a fetus, which somehow-magically-gains the ability to make use of a woman’s body for ~9 months, then loses that ability after it is born.

Why does a fetus get this right? No idea.

Why does right to life entail the right to use anothers’ body? No idea.

Why is it that you’re arguing for women to lose their right to control their bodies? I have some idea.

And we are the lucky ones. Foe better or worse, we got a shot at experiencing life. Uncounted billions of other potential humans never made it this far. Shouldn’t we be doing whatever to make sure as many others as possible get the same chance rather than giving Nature a hand by killing them off?

Did you ever address dianne’s point @53?

8. Miscarriage. Up to 80% of fertilized eggs don’t develop into babies. Most fail to implant or die in the first few weeks of pregnancy, before a “clinical pregnancy” is apparent. Shouldn’t we be spending just a little money on trying to solve this problem? Maybe just a little? Don’t these “babies” have the right to protection from disease as well as murder? Didn’t you just speak unfavorably about killing babies to save resources? Well, then we need to up our spending on research to prevent miscarriage. Massively. We’d better also start screening any woman who might become pregnant for pro-thrombotic states. Sure, it’s expensive, but they might become pregnant and if they have a PTS and become pregnant they are at risk of miscarriage. If it’s a baby from conception on we want to prevent that. And we can. It just takes resources. A modest tax increase, say, 25%, should cover it. You’ve got no problem with increasing government spending on health care in an aspect that will never benefit you, right?

You’re oh, so worried about all those fetuses that women choose to abort. Where’s your worry for the far greater numbers of fetuses that are naturally aborted over the course of a pregnancy? If you were *actually* worried about giving a chance at life to fetuses, you ought to really be concerned about that.

Also, if we are going to be responsible as a species, we need to recognize that the overpopulation of a our planet is a problem. This is something else you don’t give any consideration to.

Given that you’re an atheist, why are you so protective of fetuses? What is your justification for granting fetuses the right to use a woman’s body when no human has that right? Are you one of those who believe in the “specialness” of fetuses? Do you think they have souls?

Seversky apparently believes that overpopulation is not a problem, and that billions more people would just love to be born so that they can slowly starve to death as children. Because I’m sure those children just loved being alive in order to starve to death. Or die from awful diseases. I sure loved the viral infection that I had in the muscles of my neck when I was a kid that made any sort of movement so agonizing that I would scream. A kid in a third world country would probably have died from that; died in screaming agony because of poverty and a lack of medical care.

Are you seriously trying to argue that abortion is justified as a means of controlling population levels? We have too many people coming into the world so lets kill some of them off before they get here? Do you really believe that is morally justifiable?

Yes, it is terrible that people are dying of disease and starvation in poverty-stricken parts of the world but is that overpopulation or is it that human society is a shambles in many ways. Are they ravaged by famine because resources don’t exist anywhere in the world or they do but they’re in the wrong place and we lack the will and the means to get them where they are needed in time? Compare the appalling scenes of famine in parts of Africa with the vast amounts of food Americans and Europeans routinely throw out in their trash. That’s not overpopulation.

As for miscarriages, if you are arguing that we ought to be doing more to try and prevent them, I would agree. If you are arguing that abortions are justified because Nature does the same thing then you are committing the naturalistic fallacy. Just because that’s the way things are in Nature doesn’t mean that’s what we should do.

Finally, I am not claiming that some other living creature has the right to hijack a woman’s body for its own purposes. All human beings have a right to personal privacy, to bodily integrity and autonomy. But a fetus is not a parasite or some alien infestation. It didn’t sneak into the womb and take up residence there because it was cozy and vacant. It’s not a squatter setting up home in some vacant property. Even if it were a sort of squatter, the law doesn’t allow property owners to kill squatters to get them off their property.

A fetus is simply one stage in the human reproductive process. It is not another species, it is by any reasonable measure, human. It’s not a parasite. It didn’t sneak into the mother’s womb. It didn’t ask to be there, it didn’t choose to be there. It had absolutely no choice in the matter at all. So what did it do to deserve to be killed? If it could look you in the eye and ask you that question, what would you tell it?

As I see it, the only way you can get out of the moral dilemma presented by abortion is to deny the unborn child has a right to life. So far, you, PZ and all the other pro-choicers are in the majority. Only time will tell if that will ever change.

we are not just objects in three-dimensional space but we are also events stretched out through four-dimensional spacetime like Heinlein’s “pink worms”

Not everyone is pink.

Also, apparently, to seversky, it is better to live as a slave and in pain than not to live at all. Because otherwise one must ask, what use is my life if I do not have the autonomy to govern it myself?

But a fetus is not a parasite or some alien infestation. It didn’t sneak into the womb and take up residence there because it was cozy and vacant.

Sometimes it does that. It happens. And it is a parasite – it leeches off the uterus-holder’s body and sucks out nutrients, at the uterus-holder’s expense. That’s pretty parasitic. One need not be a different species to be a parasite.
An unborn child is not a child. It is a fetus. Not a person.
So riddle me this: why is the fetus’ ‘right to life’ so much more important than the uterus-holder’s right to bodily autonomy, considering they’re already a living, thinking person? Why should all of that – in essence, their right to life! the life they choose! – be shunted aside for some unformed potential that isn’t even wanted? You going to take care of all those unborn children, seversky? You have a uterus that large?

A fetus is simply one stage in the human reproductive process. It is not another species, it is by any reasonable measure, human.

So is my fingernail. What’s your point?

It didn’t ask to be there, it didn’t choose to be there. It had absolutely no choice in the matter at all. So what did it do to deserve to be killed? If it could look you in the eye and ask you that question, what would you tell it?

“No, you do not have the right to the use of another person’s body.”

Look, if the foetus were to be considered a person with all the rights of a person, then it should also be considered to have no more rights than other people. And other people do not have the right to claim the use of other’s bodies; even if that means they die. And this is not contingent, as per your “It didn’t sneak into the womb,” upon whether they chose to be in that position or not.

It didn’t ask to be there, it didn’t choose to be there. It had absolutely no choice in the matter at all. So what did it do to deserve to be killed? If it could look you in the eye and ask you that question, what would you tell it?

Do you notice that this is still true when talking about a tapeworm?
Not the tapeworm’s fault that you ate its egg…
And yes, I would do any potential fetuses of mine a favour by aborting them. Not sure if I’d even make it through pregnancy without doing anything drastic, but why would I burden any actual human being with the fact that I loathe their very existence?

It’s obvious that Seversky simply can’t see they are elevating the fetus above a woman. How is something one one can’t even take a direct picture of more important than the fully human woman that one can take a direct picture of?
Seversky obviously doesn’t see women as fully human with full bodily integrity. Poor person who distorts the truth for a fallacious presupposition.

Are you seriously trying to argue that abortion is justified as a means of controlling population levels? We have too many people coming into the world so lets kill some of them off before they get here? Do you really believe that is morally justifiable?

“Means of controlling population levels” = birth control.

Abortion IS a method birth control. End of story.

Note the dishonest presupposition of “too many people coming into the world so lets kill some of them off before they get here”, assuming that fetuses are people when that IS one of the points being argued. Typical intellectual dishonesty from the apologists of enslavers of women like seversky.

Note again that the argument is all about the fetus, with not even a mention of the woman. It is far beyond simply not regarding women as fully human or simply as breeders of the next generation. Animal breeders discussing cattle population management give more thought and mention to the pregnant cows.

No, for seversky women and their wants and needs and AGENCY don’t appear to even exist.

severksky @79 (see what I did there? I put your nym and the comment number together so people know who and what comment I’m responding to. Try if fuckface.)

Are you seriously trying to argue that abortion is justified as a means of controlling population levels? We have too many people coming into the world so lets kill some of them off before they get here? Do you really believe that is morally justifiable?

That’s not at all what I did (and remember, I don’t see any reason to consider fetuses people. They meet none of the criteria by which humans qualify for personhood). Remember what you said:

And we are the lucky ones. Foe better or worse, we got a shot at experiencing life. Uncounted billions of other potential humans never made it this far. Shouldn’t we be doing whatever to make sure as many others as possible get the same chance rather than giving Nature a hand by killing them off?

My response:

Also, if we are going to be responsible as a species, we need to recognize that the overpopulation of a our planet is a problem. This is something else you don’t give any consideration to.

You: Save all the fetuses.
Me: No. Do not try to save all the fetuses (if they’re wanted, then by all means, let’s do everything in our power to save them; if not, who cares? End the pregnancy).
I didn’t say anything about using abortion as a means of population control. What I said was that I don’t think that people should be doing whatever possible to bring into this world every single “potential human”. You think we should be trying to bring every potential human being into the world. I don’t.

As for miscarriages, if you are arguing that we ought to be doing more to try and prevent them, I would agree. If you are arguing that abortions are justified because Nature does the same thing then you are committing the naturalistic fallacy. Just because that’s the way things are in Nature doesn’t mean that’s what we should do.

I’m not arguing that *we* do anything. I’m saying that if you’re so concerned about fetuses, you ought to also be seeing what you can do to end spontaneous abortions, which take more of your preeeeeeeeecious fetuses that human induced abortions do. If you’re worried about ‘all those lives lost to abortion’, miscarriages take far more.

Finally, I am not claiming that some other living creature has the right to hijack a woman’s body for its own purposes.

Each and every time you say a woman should not have the right to terminate a pregnancy that is EXACTLY what you are saying. You’re saying a fetus has the right to use her body against her wishes. You’re granting it a right that no human being has.

All human beings have a right to personal privacy, to bodily integrity and autonomy. But a fetus is not a parasite or some alien infestation. It didn’t sneak into the womb and take up residence there because it was cozy and vacant. It’s not a squatter setting up home in some vacant property. Even if it were a sort of squatter, the law doesn’t allow property owners to kill squatters to get them off their property.

A fetus is a human being (not a human person) existing within the body of a pregnant woman and making use of her body (and yes, it acts in a parasitic manner). If she chooses to continue the pregnancy, the fetus has her consent. If she chooses not to continue the pregnancy, she has the right to end it.

A home is not a human body. Humans have the right to self-defense, which is also granted by bodily autonomy. Given that you can’t deal with the current arguments, you probably shouldn’t bring this one up bc you’ll lose here too (pregnancy represents a danger to a woman’s health, so she the right to terminate that pregnancy in the interest of her own well being).

You *still* don’t understand.
No human being can use the body of another human being.
Have you even read my comments about how I can’t force you to donate blood to me, even if I’ll die without it? That’s a right I do not have. I cannot use your body against your wishes. And I’m a person, with all the rights every other human being has. A fetus-whether it is a person or not (and it is not)-does not have the right to use a woman’s body against her wishes. Doesn’t matter if you characterize the fetus as a parasite, a tumor, or the Queen of Egypt.

I wonder why seversky has this special place in their heart for fetuses, but not women.
I mean it’s rather disturbing the lengths to which seversky is fighting to show their support of fetuses (I mean, really? A fetus more important than an existing human woman?)
What the fuck is so special about fetuses that makes all this fighting against women’s rights worth it?

Also, apparently, to seversky, it is better to live as a slave and in pain than not to live at all. Because otherwise one must ask, what use is my life if I do not have the autonomy to govern it myself?

To be able to ask whether life as a slave is worth living or what use it might be, you have to be alive in the first placeThat’s why the right to life is the most basic.

And it is a parasite – it leeches off the uterus-holder’s body and sucks out nutrients, at the uterus-holder’s expense. That’s pretty parasitic. One need not be a different species to be a parasite.

Some of the behavior of the fetus is similar to that of a parasite, yes. But “parasitic” is not the same as being as being a parasite. Google it. There’s a lot of discussion from ethicists as well as scientists about the issue. And from a scientific perspective a parasite is a different species than the host.

An unborn child is not a child. It is a fetus. Not a person.

An unborn child is a child in the broadest meaning of the word. “Fetus” describes a particular stage in the development of a human being. “Personhood” is irrelevant. It is enough that it is human for the purpose of entitlement to the right to life.

So riddle me this: why is the fetus’ ‘right to life’ so much more important than the uterus-holder’s right to bodily autonomy, considering they’re already a living, thinking person? Why should all of that – in essence, their right to life! the life they choose! – be shunted aside for some unformed potential that isn’t even wanted? You going to take care of all those unborn children, seversky? You have a uterus that large?

I am arguing that a human fetus should have the right to life. Nothing more. Not the right to free speech nor the right to freedom of religion nor the right to vote. Just the human right to life. In what possible way is that giving the fetus more rights or more consideration than the mother?

The right to life is the most basic right, as I said before, because, without it, all the others are meaningless.

One difference between the pro-life and pro-choice camps is that pro-lifers are working for an outcome to unwanted pregnancy where both the mother and child survive. Pro-choicers are content if only the mother survives.

And it seems to me that a big question to answer is why the child is unwanted. If it’s because it poses a real threat to the mother’s life or long-term health then abortion is permissible. I’ve never had a problem with medical exemptions.

A gray area is pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest. Clearly, asking a rape victim to carry an unwanted child to term is a terrible imposition, almost punishing the victim rather than the offender. On the other hand, the fetus did not ask to be brought into existence that way. Why should it be killed for something that was not its fault and which it had nothing to do with? This is not an easy one.

But what of other reasons? What about cases of women who do not have the means to support the child for various reasons? Couldn’t putting the child up for adoption be a better solution. What if that child, unwanted by its biological mother, were just what a childless couple were looking for? What of the woman who wants to get rid of the child because it gets in the way of her career or would prevent her going on vacation? Are you really trying to defend killing the fetus because it’s inconvenient?

To be able to ask whether life as a slave is worth living or what use it might be, you have to be alive in the first place That’s why the right to life is the most basic.

You’ve got to be deliberately misunderstanding rq’s comment. You can’t be this idiotic. She’s talking about pregnant women. When she says this:

Also, apparently, to seversky, it is better to live as a slave and in pain than not to live at all. Because otherwise one must ask, what use is my life if I do not have the autonomy to govern it myself?

She’s talking about how you want to enslave pregnant women. Yes, that’s the end result of your “save all the fetuses” activism. You don’t want women to exercise their bodily autonomy for 9 months. You want them to be enslaved to the organism inside them because you value the life of a fetus more than the life of an existing human person. You disgust me.

The right to life is the most basic right, as I said before, because, without it, all the others are meaningless.

Sure, the right of existing human persons to live is a fundamental right. Fetuses aren’t people, and ONCE MOTHERFUCKING AGAIN- even if they were a person, they don’t have the right to use the body of a pregnant women. You keep avoiding this, but it’s at the core of the abortion issue. You think fetuses have a right to use the body of a pregnant woman against her wishes (or you think that all pregnant women should *want* their babies and thus choose to remain pregnant, which is fucking asinine, bc clearly not all pregnant women want to remain pregnant).
FETUSES
DO
NOT
HAVE
THE
RIGHT
TO
THE
USE
OF
A
PREGNANT
WOMAN’S
BODY.
No human being has that right. Ever. Full stop. You’re going to keep banging your head uselessly against a wall until you understand this. Even if it is to save your life, you cannot use the body of another without their permission. Not you. Not me. Not a goddamn fetus!

Some of the behavior of the fetus is similar to that of a parasite, yes. But “parasitic” is not the same as being as being a parasite. Google it. There’s a lot of discussion from ethicists as well as scientists about the issue. And from a scientific perspective a parasite is a different species than the host.

Really?

A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. Parasites can cause disease in humans. Some parasitic diseases are easily treated and some are not. The burden of these diseases often rests on communities in the tropics and subtropics, but parasitic infections also affect people in developed countries.

That’s from the CDC. A fetus lives in the body of a pregnant woman and gets all of it’s food at from and at the expense of the pregnant woman. I suspect you’re trying to imbue fetuses with some magical specialness that makes them not parasites, but in function, that’s exactly what they are.

I am arguing that a human fetus should have the right to life. Nothing more. Not the right to free speech nor the right to freedom of religion nor the right to vote. Just the human right to life. In what possible way is that giving the fetus more rights or more consideration than the mother?

God damn but you’re one dense misogynistic shitstain. You want to give fetuses the right to life, so that they can be born into this world. In the process of doing that, you automatically deny women the right to bodily autonomy. This right allows them to make decisions about their body and choose if they want to become or remain pregnant. It also provides the foundation for self-defense. So the right to bodily autonomy gives a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy, bc it’s her body and the fetus doesn’t have a right to use it. It also gives her the right to terminate a pregnancy for self defense reasons, bc pregnancy is a health risk for women.

One difference between the pro-life and pro-choice camps is that pro-lifers are working for an outcome to unwanted pregnancy where both the mother and child survive. Pro-choicers are content if only the mother survives.

Pro lifers value a fetus more than a pregnant woman. They want to force pregnant women to be enslaved for 9 months to a fetus whether they want to or not. That’s not worrying about the pregnant woman. That’s worrying about the fetus. And don’t forget that pro-lifers do not support any legislation that would actually help the lives of those fetuses who are born, as has been pointed out in this thread (you fetus worshipers oppose government assistance programs which benefit low income mothers who have newborns to feed; you oppose universal healthcare, which would greatly benefit pregnant women, fetuses, newborns, and mothers; you oppose universal pre-school, which would allow women to re-enter the workforce, thus providing money to feed their children; there are many, many more, so don’t even try to claim you assholes support pregnant women, mothers, or children. You’re glorified fetus worshipers who don’t give a shit about anything other than a fucking fetus. Once it’s born you don’t care what happens to it.)

And it seems to me that a big question to answer is why the child is unwanted. If it’s because it poses a real threat to the mother’s life or long-term health then abortion is permissible. I’ve never had a problem with medical exemptions.

For the purposes of my support for a woman’s right to choose, I don’t give a rat’s ass what her reasons are. If she doesn’t want to remain pregnant, I support her right. Period.
And look at you being so gracious as to “allow” women the right to control their bodies IF and ONLY IF their life is in danger.
Guess what you misogynistic asshole, pregnancy is a health hazard to women, as Valde pointed out at comment 408 on the first page of this thread :

Normal, frequent or expectable temporary side effects of pregnancy:
exhaustion (weariness common from first weeks)
altered appetite and senses of taste and smell
nausea and vomiting (50% of women, first trimester)
heartburn and indigestion
constipation
weight gain
dizziness and light-headedness
bloating, swelling, fluid retention
hemmorhoids
abdominal cramps
yeast infections
congested, bloody nose
acne and mild skin disorders
skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)
mild to severe backache and strain
increased headaches
difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping
increased urination and incontinence
bleeding gums
pica
breast pain and discharge
swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain
difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy
inability to take regular medications
shortness of breath
higher blood pressure
hair loss
tendency to anemia
curtailment of ability to participate in some sports and activities
infection including from serious and potentially fatal disease
(pregnant women are immune suppressed compared with non-pregnant women, and are more susceptible to fungal and certain other diseases)
extreme pain on delivery
hormonal mood changes, including normal post-partum depression
continued post-partum exhaustion and recovery period (exacerbated if a c-section — major surgery — is required, sometimes taking up to a full year to fully recover)
Normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:
stretch marks (worse in younger women)
loose skin
permanent weight gain or redistribution
abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness
pelvic floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life — aka prolapsed utuerus, the malady sometimes badly fixed by the transvaginal mesh)
changes to breasts
varicose veins
scarring from episiotomy or c-section
other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by women, because the culture values youth and beauty)
increased proclivity for hemmorhoids
loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)
higher lifetime risk of developing Altzheimer’s
newer research indicates microchimeric cells, other bi-directional exchanges of DNA, chromosomes, and other bodily material between fetus and mother (including with “unrelated” gestational surrogates)
Occasional complications and side effects:
complications of episiotomy
spousal/partner abuse
hyperemesis gravidarum
temporary and permanent injury to back
severe scarring requiring later surgery
(especially after additional pregnancies)
dropped (prolapsed) uterus (especially after additional pregnancies, and other pelvic floor weaknesses — 11% of women, including cystocele, rectocele, and enterocele)
pre-eclampsia (edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy, associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 – 10% of pregnancies)
eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)
gestational diabetes
placenta previa
anemia (which can be life-threatening)
thrombocytopenic purpura
severe cramping
embolism (blood clots)
medical disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either mother or baby)
diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles
mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)
serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)
hormonal imbalance
ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)
broken bones (ribcage, “tail bone”)
hemorrhage and
numerous other complications of delivery
refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease
aggravation of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in .5% of pregnant women, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency of seizures)
severe post-partum depression and psychosis
research now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female fertility treatments, including “egg harvesting” from infertile women and donors
research also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy
research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease
Less common (but serious) complications:
peripartum cardiomyopathy
cardiopulmonary arrest
magnesium toxicity
severe hypoxemia/acidosis
massive embolism
increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction
molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease
(like a pregnancy-induced cancer)
malignant arrhythmia
circulatory collapse
placental abruption
obstetric fistula
More permanent side effects:
future infertility
permanent disability
death.

Take your fucking fetus worshiping, women hating elsewhere. I hope PZ bans your ass, bc at this point, you are hopeless.
You refuse to accept that bodily autonomy grants women the right to abort a pregnancy.
You refuse to accept that a fetus does not have the right to use a pregnant woman’s body.
You continue to actively campaign for women to be enslaved for 9 months.

Hopefully there are people lurking out there who understand what we’ve been telling your for two pages now: Person or not, a fetus does not have the right to the use of a pregnant woman’s body. Ever. That is not a right held by any human being. As such, a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy as she chooses.

That’s not at all what I did (and remember, I don’t see any reason to consider fetuses people. They meet none of the criteria by which humans qualify for personhood)

And I hope I’ve made it clear what I think about basing the right to life on “personhood”.

Me: No. Do not try to save all the fetuses (if they’re wanted, then by all means, let’s do everything in our power to save them; if not, who cares? End the pregnancy).

And that’s what I find alarming, that pro-choicers don’t care.

I didn’t say anything about using abortion as a means of population control. What I said was that I don’t think that people should be doing whatever possible to bring into this world every single “potential human”. You think we should be trying to bring every potential human being into the world. I don’t.

Not quite. I am arguing that we grant the human fetus the right to life just we do to a human being at later stages of development. In that case, we would would be no more free to kill them at will than we would an adult.

And, yet again, the fetus is human by any reasonable measure. It’s not going to grow into a frog or horse. Allowed to develop normally it will become an adult human being.

Neither is it a parasite. It’s just one stage in the human reproductive cycle. We have no reason to think that the human body has evolved to host the tapeworm. We think, rather, that the life-cycle of the tapeworm has most probably adapted to exploit human biology. The female human body, on the other hand, like other mammals has evolved the capacity to host and support human young for several months . That is not parasitism.

A home is not a human body. Humans have the right to self-defense, which is also granted by bodily autonomy. Given that you can’t deal with the current arguments, you probably shouldn’t bring this one up bc you’ll lose here too (pregnancy represents a danger to a woman’s health, so she the right to terminate that pregnancy in the interest of her own well being).

Human beings have the right to kill in self-defense if they have reason to believe that their own life or that of another human being is in imminent danger. If a man tries to violently rape a woman then she has the right to kill him, if she is able, to defend herself. That is not in question. If a woman’s life or long-term health are threatened by a pregnancy then abortion is permissible. But, if a pregnancy follows a voluntary act of sexual intercourse, even if it was the result of carelessness or the failure of contraception, and if the fetus has the right to life then the woman does not have the right to terminate the pregnancy at will. The right to life of the fetus takes precedence.

No human being can use the body of another human being.
Have you even read my comments about how I can’t force you to donate blood to me, even if I’ll die without it? That’s a right I do not have. I cannot use your body against your wishes. And I’m a person, with all the rights every other human being has. A fetus-whether it is a person or not (and it is not)-does not have the right to use a woman’s body against her wishes. Doesn’t matter if you characterize the fetus as a parasite, a tumor, or the Queen of Egypt.

If you have read what I wrote before you will know that I fully agree that no human being has the right to forcibly hijack the body of another and use it for their own purposes. That is not the case in pregnancy. The fetus did not use brute force to make the woman host it neither did it deliberately sneak into the womb without asking. There was no act of will by the fetus at all which is the case for all the other examples quoted. It finds itself there by accident and has done nothing to deserve being killed.

Not that my view really matters. The pro-choice position is the law and is supported by the weight of Roe v Wade. That is not going to change unless opinion in the country changes substantially.

And I hope I’ve made it clear what I think about basing the right to life on “personhood”.

And you are stupid if you think repeating proven oxymorons is a meaning argument. Evidence, not your fuckwitted opinion and irrational emotional based arguments are needed here, and you have squat.

And, yet again, the fetus is human by any reasonable measure.

Nope, not born yet. You lose loser. It doesn’t ever trump the humanity of the woman until you provide said evidence it is MORE human. Equal, the woman wins every time. More logical fallacies by a professional liar and bullshitter.

The right to life of the fetus takes precedence.

There is no right to life for the fetus. You haven’t shown, just presupposed it exists. More lies and bullshit from somebody not doing rational evidence based argument. Your arguement. such as it is, is purely emotional and sloganeering.

But, if a pregnancy follows a voluntary act of sexual intercourse, even if it was the result of carelessness or the failure of contraception, and if the fetus has the right to life then the woman does not have the right to terminate the pregnancy at will. The right to life of the fetus takes precedence.

If you have read what I wrote before you will know that I fully agree that no human being has the right to forcibly hijack the body of another and use it for their own purposes. That is not the case in pregnancy. The fetus did not use brute force to make the woman host it neither did it deliberately sneak into the womb without asking. There was no act of will by the fetus at all which is the case for all the other examples quoted. It finds itself there by accident and has done nothing to deserve being killed.

It doesn’t matter how the fetus wound up there. If a woman is pregnant, that means a fetus is in her body, using her resources to nourish itself and grow. It is using her body, just as a parasite does. You’re fond of treating a fetus as a person, but people don’t have that right. This has nothing to do with deserving anything. Even if the fetus has a right to life, that still doesn’t mean it has a right to be inside a pregnant woman.

Not that my view really matters. The pro-choice position is the law and is supported by the weight of Roe v Wade. That is not going to change unless opinion in the country changes substantially.

I’m sure you and millions of people would be happy to have women enslaved for 9 months to a fucking fetus too.

If a woman’s life or long-term health are threatened by a pregnancy then abortion is permissible.

Did you miss the hella long list of health related problems women face during pregnancy? Fetuses negatively affect the health of a pregnant woman. If a pregnant woman chooses to view it as such, an abortion can be seen as a way to improve her health. Presto! No fetus leeching off her body.
You’re still stuck in thinking fetuses are some sort of magical, special thing that shouldn’t be killed. Yet you cannot articulate why, other than “right to life” (which you’ve provided no justification for; assertions are not justifications). Nor have you come close to responding to the fact that a fetus doesn’t have the right to use a woman’s body; bc no matter what conditions you place upon a woman’s pregnancy, to survive, a fetus has to use a woman’s body. It must have her ongoing consent, just as anyone else who wishes to use her body.
We don’t allow conscious, thinking, feeling, pain capable, existing human beings to use others’ bodies. Why the fuck should we allow a clump of cells to use a pregnant woman’s body?
Oh, I forgot, you want to enslave women for 9 months (but in your eyes, it’s not slavery, despite the fact that if you had your way, women would lose their bodily autonomy for 9 months, with the fetus being more important than they are).

If a woman’s life or long-term health are threatened by a pregnancy then abortion is permissible.

ALL pregnancies threaten a woman’s life and long-term health. Today the average life expectancy of women is slightly higher than that of men, in first world nations. That is entirely due to the availability of birth control. Before that, the average life expectancy for women was less than for men, and that almost entirely due to the short and long term detrimental impacts on health that “normal” pregnancies cause.

It’s obvious Seversky won’t acknowledge women are fully human, will full human rights, including bodily integrity. Seversky just won’t get over the disproved claim that abortion is killing babies, and is only responding with emotion to that. That is all Seversky, with their limited imagination and intellect, can see. I bet the next claim from Seversky is that their deity isn’t imaginary. It’s on the same level of delusion.

If you have read what I wrote before you will know that I fully agree that no human being has the right to forcibly hijack the body of another and use it for their own purposes. That is not the case in pregnancy.

Note the deliberately dishonest use of the weasel-word “forcibly” in there.

No, no human being as the right to hijack the body of another. Period. Whether “forcibly” or not “forcibly” does not matter.

And of course, seversky’s position means that the state has the right to FORCIBLY hijack a woman’s body for the purposes of a third party, ie the fetus, which is hardly any different.

A gray area is pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest. Clearly, asking a rape victim to carry an unwanted child to term is a terrible imposition, almost punishing the victim rather than the offender. On the other hand, the fetus did not ask to be brought into existence that way. Why should it be killed for something that was not its fault and which it had nothing to do with? This is not an easy one.

It’s ever so difficult to decide if women are full human beings with the right to decide what happens to their bodies or not. Our poor misogynist is having a difficult time here.
It’s soo difficult to see that since women are human beings with full personhood rights (which among other things grants them bodily autonomy-which means no one and nothing can use their body without permission), then they get to exercise their right right to bodily autonomy to end a pregnancy. Whether or not a fetus asked to be there is besides the point.

BTW, seversky, I’m glad to know that if I ever need a kidney to survive that I can demand you give me one of yours, and you have to, whether you want to or not. Oh, wait, I’m not a vile human being who would ever wish to violate the bodily autonomy of another. Nor would I support measures that would lead to people having their bodily autonomy violated. So you can rest easy. Despite knowing that you voluntarily support robbing women of their bodily autonomy (I’m sure half the population of the planet would love to be slaves for 9 months), I wouldn’t do the same to you, even if my life depended on it.

Human beings have the right to kill in self-defense if they have reason to believe that their own life or that of another human being is in imminent danger.

We grant the right of a homeowner to kill a home invader if they have reason to believe that their own life was in danger, entirely on their own judgment, even when the reality is that the chance that they would have ended up killed is significantly less than 1%.

The mortality risk to a woman from a NORMAL pregnancy is roughly in the same range.

Thank you seversky, you have just conceded that ALL pregnant women have the right to terminate their pregnancies whenever they wish.

Thanks Tony. So basically, he can’t give a straight answer. He can’t punish the rape victim for the crime of getting raped, but at the same time, the mindless embyro is so fucking special that she should be legally obligated to birth it.

Seversky, what part of a fetus makes it more spayshal than the autonomous human female containing it? Is it the unblemished soul it’s been injected with perhaps? Is it that it could possibly be a (gasp) MALE? Your objections sound religious, so far.

Actually, Seversky’s method of argument is totally theistic. Never let minor things like the requirement of evidence for fuckwitted and irrational claims stop you from making making the emotional claims you can’t back up. And then ignore all evidence that refutes your sorry ass.

The fetus did not use brute force to make the woman host it neither did it deliberately sneak into the womb without asking. There was no act of will by the fetus at all which is the case for all the other examples quoted. It finds itself there by accident and has done nothing to deserve being killed.

If I stab you with a knife and damage your kidneys, you cannot compel me to donate mine to you. Even if there’s no other compatible donor available. Even though your need for a kidney is no fault of your own and is the result of my deliberate action. Even if you’re my child and I brought you into the world, you still can’t force me to give up a kidney. Even if I die from my own injuries sustained in this car accident. Even if I had previously consented to be an organ donor, my family can still override that and say no.

First, my objection to abortion is based purely on the human rights argument. It has nothing to do with religion. As I wrote before, I am agnostic and atheist.

Yes, I would permit abortion in the case of rape and other medical emergencies. I would allow carers to try and persuade the woman to have the child if they judged she could cope with the stress. If it was clear, however, that such a course would cause prolonged trauma then abortion would be the better course with out any attempt to persuade the woman otherwise.

I am not arguing that the fetus should be privileged over the woman in any way. I am not suggesting that it be granted more rights than the woman. I am simply asking that it be granted one – just one – human right that of the right to life. No more. No less.

Hypotheticals about being forced to donate internal organs fall flat on their face from the outset. The fetus is only a temporary resident in the mother. It certainly does not hijack the mothers internal organs and take them away permanently to use for itself. Under normal circumstances, it does no lasting harm at all. That’s not to deny there are health risks involved in pregnancy but, as I wrote above, I would allow medical exemptions.

The right to kill in self-defense only applies where there is an immediate threat to the life of oneself or another human being. A trespasser who is not trying to kill anyone doesn’t count.

If the fetus has no right to life then he mother can dispose of it, or have someone else dispose of it, any time she chooses. If the fetus has the right to life then it cannot be harmed unless it poses a direct threat to the mother’s life or long-term health. The right to life takes precedence – must take precedence – over all others except in certain narrowly-defined circumstances for the reason I gave before. Without the basic right to life, all others are meaningless. To enjoy and exercise the other rights you have, first of all, to be alive.

You keep talking about human rights. Get this through your thick skull – there is no RIGHT to occupy the body of another without explicit and ongoing consent. I can’t occupy your body for life support, no matter how much I need it, and neither can a prenate.

It’s that simple. The right to use another person’s body as life support without consent DOES NOT EXIST. Case closed.

First, my objection to abortion is based purely on the human rights argument. It has nothing to do with religion. As I wrote before, I am agnostic and atheist.

Who gives a shit about your objection to abortion. Don’t have one if you don’t like it. Meanwhile, where the fuck do you get off telling any woman what she, who has absolute bodily integrity, to do? And you argue like a theist, and anti-choice fuckwits like yourself never stop lying. I don’t believe you are an atheist, any more than I believe in your oxymoron of unborn XXXX.

I am not arguing that the fetus should be privileged over the woman in any way.

As I said, anti–choice fuckwits lie through their teeth. No matter what you claim, the end result of your fuckwitted delusional thinking is that the fetus trumps the woman. So, either the fetus is promoted, or the woman devalued. Until you stop lying to yourself on that one, you won’t have a cogent argument.

I am simply asking that it be granted one

Except it is a full human being until it is born. What an abject loser you are, to pretend that unborn xXX is the equivalent of a born baby, with a birth certificate. It isn’t, and never will be.

A trespasser who is not trying to kill anyone doesn’t count.

Then you aren’t look at the evidence. Pregnancy is far, far harder on a woman than an abortion. You ignore the truth, since it doesn’t allow for your presuppositional idiocy. Just like the religious in your thinking.

If the fetus has no right to life then he mother can dispose of it, or have someone else dispose of it, any time she chooses. I

If it was clear, however, that such a course would cause prolonged trauma then abortion would be the better course with out any attempt to persuade the woman otherwise.

What if this was clear, even though the pregnancy was not a result of rape? Pregnancy is often a very traumatic experience, rape or no rape. That’s one reason why the woman’s consent is imperative if you care at all about her physical or psychological health.

You keep talking about human rights. Get this through your thick skull – there is no RIGHT to occupy the body of another without explicit and ongoing consent. I can’t occupy your body for life support, no matter how much I need it, and neither can a prenate.
It’s that simple. The right to use another person’s body as life support without consent DOES NOT EXIST. Case closed

There are no absolute human rights. There are no human rights without exceptions. The right to free speech does not mean you can shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater just for the hell of it. The right to life does not prevent you from killing in defense of yourself or another where there is no reasonable alternative. Similarly, a woman’s right to privacy would not necessarily be paramount if the unborn child is recognized as having the right to life. This does not mean that anyone or anything could use her body in anyway they chose. Rather, it is a unique and exceptional case since her right to privacy does not extend to killing a human being – albeit one at an early stage of development – unless her own life is threatened.

If course, this only applies if the unborn child is held to have the right to life. If you deny that then there is no objection to abortion.

What if this was clear, even though the pregnancy was not a result of rape? Pregnancy is often a very traumatic experience, rape or no rape. That’s one reason why the woman’s consent is imperative if you care at all about her physical or psychological health.

That would fall under the heading of medical exemption. If it was judged that the pregnancy, although in all other respects perfectly normal, was causing the mother such extreme trauma that her long-term health or even life were threatened then abortion would be permissible.

Seversky, you keep coming back here to talk about what would be the case if, if, if, a fetus was considered to have a right to life. Everybody can figure that out, and already has, thanks. Further, you keep blattering on about your idea of what would be the case if that hypothetical were to occur, ignoring everyone else’s disagreement. Which is odd, because your case depends on ignoring what women want and think. You are a parasite on this blog.

If it was judged that the pregnancy, although in all other respects perfectly normal, was causing the mother such extreme trauma that her long-term health or even life were threatened then abortion would be permissible.

Who is going to judge? By what criteria? And how fast will they work? What about appeals? And why not just let the woman decide?

Pregnancy isn’t perfectly normal, ever. It is a traumatic, damaging process. Raising a child is hard work for many years. Living with having given a child up for adoption is rough, too.

Permissable? You are going to allow an abortion, but then stigmatize the woman forever?

Look, if easy, early abortions were allowed on the woman’s discretion, all your judging problems go clean away. The pregnancy would not be known to anyone, not even the pre-fetus that you project so much on to.

Similarly, a woman’s right to privacy would not necessarily be paramount if the unborn child is recognized as having the right to life. This does not mean that anyone or anything could use her body in anyway they chose. Rather, it is a unique and exceptional case since her right to privacy does not extend to killing a human being – albeit one at an early stage of development – unless her own life is threatened.
If course, this only applies if the unborn child is held to have the right to life. If you deny that then there is no objection to abortion.

You’re still trolling away I see.
And you’ve still not addressed the fact that even IF a fetus has a right to life, that right conflicts with a woman’s bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy means a woman gets to decide what happens to and with her body. So we have a conflict (but only IF you believe a fetus has a right to life-a point I only concede for this argument, bc I do not believe such a right exists):
Fetus’ right to life
vs
Woman’s right to bodily autonomy
What do we do?
You think we should side with the fetus.
What happens if we do that? The woman loses her bodily autonomy, automatically, bc she is now unable to have the choice to have an abortion. That choice is taken from her bc the fetus’ life has been determined to be more important than the woman’s bodily autonomy. So now, whether the woman wants to or not, she’ll be forced-by people like you-to carry her pregnancy to term. She’ll be treated as a walking incubator who’s decisions about her body are of secondary importance to the fetus growing within and using her body.

Recall that pregnancy is not a harmless condition for women. Recall that pregnancy can and does threaten the lives of women, such that abortion can rightfully be performed in the interests of the health of the woman. But no, remember that people like you have no concept of all the health related issues-issues enumerated back at comment #408 by Valde-that can result from pregnancy. Either that, or you simply don’t care that women can suffer anything from inconveniences to severe health issues during the course of a pregnancy.

But wait, it gets better, there’s a subset of people like you who think to themselves “Golly, if the life of a woman is in jeopardy, we ought to let her have an abortion”. So now you’ve decided that there’s a certain level to which a woman’s health can slip where you feel justified in allowing her to have an abortion. At this level and below, a fetus’ “right to life” becomes not so terribly important anymore bc people like you have decided that the health of a pregnant woman is in such trouble that it justifies an abortion.

Yet this isn’t consistent with your opposition to abortion. You cite “the right to life of the poor widdle fetus” as justification for preventing women from exercising their reproductive rights. So if you allow for an exception, you’re not being consistent in your support for “the right to life of the poor widdle fetus”.

Why the inconsistency? Does a fetus have a “right to life” or not? Come on, where’s your backbone? Assert with full conviction that all fetuses have a right to life, with no exceptions, otherwise your “right to life” argument doesn’t hold water (well it still doesn’t, but at least you’ll be arguing with some consistency).

In *my* book (still conceding the point that fetuses even have a right to life), we have the conflict:

Right to life of a fetus
vs
Right to bodily autonomy of a woman

How do we resolve this conflict?

Does the fetus have the right to use the body of a pregnant woman for its continued existence, even if the lack of such will result in the death of the fetus? Does any human person have the right to use the body of another human for its continued existence, even if the lack of such will result in the death of that person?

We know the answer to the second is NO. No human being has the right to use another persons’ body, even if it is to save their life. As I’ve mentioned to you once, twice, or a hundred times now, I cannot compel you to donate blood to me, even if I need your blood to save my life. I cannot use *your* body for my needs. Ever. Even to save my life. That is not a right I have. That is not a right you have. That is not a right *any* human person has.

If no human person has this right, why should a fetus have this right? Especially since the fetus isn’t even a human person (and even if it was, it wouldn’t have this right).

For my argument, even if a fetus has a right to life, it does not have an additional right to use the body of a pregnant woman to sustain itself. Without that right, a woman can exercise her right to bodily autonomy to terminate the pregnancy. You can whinge and complain and moan and gripe all you want about the “poor widdle fetus”, but it does not have the right to use a pregnant woman’s body for its continued existence.

This is at the heart of anti-abortion arguments: you think fetuses not only have a right to life, but have an additional right that no other human being has-the right to the use of the body of another human being (in this case a pregnant woman), against their wishes.

You can quibble over what is meant by “use her body” or that “the fetus didn’t have any control over how it got there”, but it doesn’t change the fact that to survive, a fetus sustains itself by taking nutrients from the body of a pregnant woman. It lives off the body of the pregnant woman-just like a parasite:

A parasitic relationship is one in which one member of the association benefits while the other is harmed. This is also known as antagonistic or antipathetic symbiosis.Parasitic symbioses take many forms, from endoparasites that live within the host’s body to ectoparasites that live on its surface. In addition, parasites may be necrotrophic, which is to say they kill their host, or biotrophic, meaning they rely on their host’s surviving. Biotrophic parasitism is an extremely successful mode of life. Depending on the definition used, as many as half of all animals have at least one parasitic phase in their life cycles, and it is also frequent in plants and fungi. Moreover, almost all free-living animals are host to one or more parasite taxa. An example of a biotrophic relationship would be a tick feeding on the blood of its host.

I suspect the opposition to calling a fetus a parasite is due to the perception that a fetus is something special, or has a soul, or some religious nonsense (even atheists retain religious baggage like a belief in souls), despite the fact that women’s health is negatively impacted as a direct result of being pregnant (the fetus benefits, the woman not only doesn’t benefit, she suffers).

The crux of my argument is that the woman is the one who should get to determine whether she continues her pregnancy or terminates it. Why? I really should have kept track of how many times I’ve said it, but once again: her body, her choice. The body of a pregnant woman does not belong to a fetus (this is the right that people like you want to grant the fetus). It belongs to her.

****

Incidentally, I don’t normally like to engage in othering and I’m fully aware that I’ve done so here, by referring to people like you. I’ve done so specifically to highlight the fact that you sit on the anti-equality, anti-woman side of an ideological divide. You, and other anti-abortion supporters do not treat women as fully realized human beings with the rights that all human beings have. You *say* you do, but when one looks at the legislation you support or the arguments you use-in this case, arguing for abortion restrictions-the result of your arguments and legislation is a curtailing of the rights of women. Denial of human rights is the same thing as treating women as less than human. It’s inherently a vile, disgusting ideological position to have, and my use of people like you is intended to call you out for that bullshit.

That would fall under the heading of medical exemption. If it was judged that the pregnancy, although in all other respects perfectly normal, was causing the mother such extreme trauma that her long-term health or even life were threatened then abortion would be permissible.

Ah that arbitrary point where you and other people, who have no business butting into affairs of a woman’s health, have decided that there is a level of suffering at which women should be able to exercise their bodily autonomy. You’ve also decided that your precious “right to life of a fetus” isn’t so precious anymore, bc *now* you will *allow* a woman to have a procedure you deem medically necessary.

It’s swell that you’ve decided there’s a point at which a woman can exercise her reproductive rights. I think it’s totes awesome that you’ll come down from your lofty perch of dictating to women what they can do with their bodies and make the decision to allow them to have an abortion. You’re swell.

(if at this point, you can’t tell the last paragraph was dripping with sarcasm, well, you have a problem).
Nice to see your consistent support for the “right to life of a fetus”.

Right to life my ass. You want to control women’s bodies. Denying them the right to an abortion and later granting them the right to an abortion under your terms, rather than hers is very much seeking to control women’s bodies. Of course you don’t see it that way, possibly bc you’re so stuck on “intent”, without seeing the consequences and repercussions of your beliefs on the people you want to control. Either that, or you don’t see those people-women-as people.

Either way, you’re a reprehensible scuzzbucket with the empathy of a gnat.

They also value fetuses much more than actual children. Because if you like children, you want them to be loved and you want them to grow up in circumstances where they can develop well. If you have a quant of empathy for children you don’t want to burden them with being the thing that ruined their mother’s life.

Seversky

I would allow carers to try and persuade the woman to have the child if they judged she could cope with the stress.

Emphasis mine. You really don’t see women as people. You think that They™ can judge whether she could cope, but obviously not she herself.

just one – human right that of the right to life.

Granted.
Outside of my body.
End of story.

The fetus is only a temporary resident in the mother.

1. “Mother” is a term for women who have children, not for pregnant people.
2. So that’s the “it’s only 9 months!” square on my Bingo card. Sure, if any other human inflicted the horrors and pain f childbirth on anybody, preferable somebody with a cis-penis we’d call it torture, but’s let just gloss over all these things and all the inevitable adverse health consequences for the pregnant person, shall we?

There are no human rights without exceptions.

Except when talking about fetuses, of course, who get extra-special rights because special pleading is special.

If it was judged that the pregnancy, although in all other respects perfectly normal, was causing the mother such extreme trauma that her long-term health or even life were threatened then abortion would be permissible.

Hey, so you’ve got that magical instrument to look into the future to see which woman will have a traumatic childbirth or who will be traumatized by the pain? Cool, get it patented. You get rich and you’ll revolutionize obestetrics.
Until you can come up with that tool you’re just an ignorant bullshitter who pretends that there’s a solution to all those problems so forced pregnancy and birth become somehow OK.

Also, what’s your baseline risk at which you’ll allow a woman to have an abortion?
What percentage? Is a 5% chance of maternal death enough? 10% 50% 0.01%
Give me a number so I can see how many women you’re willing to kill.toska

What if this was clear, even though the pregnancy was not a result of rape? Pregnancy is often a very traumatic experience, rape or no rape.

PTSD from childbirth is a thing. But it’s a risk seversky is willing to make pregnant people take, whether they consent to it or not. So is dying in childbirth…

Seversky, your view of abortion is very strange in several ways. Several of those strangenesses have been well discussed above, not that you care. I am going to add my angle on things …

First, you claim to be an atheist or agnostic, and you really don’t see how your stance conflicts with that. For one thing, the modern conservative view of abortion is a recent artificially-generated astroturf effort to energize the religious right as a voting bloc — it is not a moral or ethical or historical stand, it is an emotional result of a propaganda campaign — and it is a religious movement, though with no actual basis in scripture. You may actually be an atheist, but of the kind who believes that there is no god, rather than the sort who does not believe that there is a god. Or you could be an outlier, or just outright a liar.

Second, your stance is profoundly anti-intellectual. See, you define a fetus as human in a way that includes any meatsack, but does not require a brain. You haven’t given a damned bit of weight to intellect, persona, experience, personality or psyche.

To you, all the things that a woman has gone through, all that she has learned, thought, become and decided, has no value. Your anti-intellectualism is doubled down on women.

There are no absolute human rights. There are no human rights without exceptions. T

And there is no right to life for fetuses. They are fully human yet, and won’t be until they are born. DUH. Any fool can see that. Which makes you less than a fool. Village idjit comes to mind.

Similarly, a woman’s right to privacy would not necessarily be paramount if the unborn child is recognized as having the right to life.

Except it hasn’t, and shouldn’t, have a “right”. That comes with being fully human, that is born. Otherwise, you would acknowledge the TRUTH. The only way a fetus has a right to life, is if you purposely devalue the woman and her right to bodily autonomy, and you must make a solid and conclusive case that the fetus is more of a person than the woman. And you can’t, as the woman has full rights…..
Your emotional and fuckwitted arguments are the same that the anti-choice fuckwits has used since Roe v. Wade. They were stupid then, they are stupid now, and you invented “right to life” where the fetus trumps the woman is sheer stupidity. When you learn how to think, you will realize your argument is nothing but slogans without evidence….

Get another thing through your thick skull – it is 100% impossible to predict, in advance, which women will die and/or become permanently disabled from pregnancy. By forcing all women to gestate, you are essentially denying women the right to life, as a group. Women, as individuals, have the *inalienable* right to life, and you take that away from them when you reduce their lives to mere statistics.

I would allow carers to try and persuade the woman to have the child if they judged she could cope with the stress.

How. Dare. You.

How fucking dare you to think it’s acceptable to require a woman to risk her life, or her long-term health should she survive, to sacrifice twenty years raising a child – likely raising in poverty if she is single – a child she does not want, especially if she was raped.

You’re a forced-birther. That’s the equivalent of a pro-rapist in my book.

Human rights? You’ve just made it blazingly clear you don’t think women are humans with rights at all.

Because they desperately need to gloss over that whole “birth” thing in order to keep up their fairy tale about pregnancy being “no big deal, it takes just 9 months, it’s not as if it were permanent”.
That’s pretty hard to keep up when you have a thousand tales of women screaming, bleeding, begging for this to stop and dying.

That would fall under the heading of medical exemption. If it was judged that the pregnancy, although in all other respects perfectly normal, was causing the mother such extreme trauma that her long-term health or even life were threatened then abortion would be permissible.

A couple of others have answered this in much the same way I would, but I want to respond to this, since it was a response to my question.
~
You use the passive sentence structure “If it was judged” to take the subject out of this sentence. But who is the subject? Who is the one who judges whether the pregnancy is causing the mother enough trauma to allow for abortion? And why do you think that they are a better judge than the woman, who is actually the person experiencing the trauma? You see, this is the whole problem we have with your position. This is why we don’t think you are seeing women as full people. You concede that there are pregnancies that should be aborted for the mother’s sake, but you won’t allow the mother herself to be involved in the decision over whether her pregnancy is one of those pregnancies. You’d rather leave it up to judges, lawyers, politicians, doctors, her father, her husband, or whoever else you are thinking of when you say other people can decide whether the trauma is too much to expect of her.
~
And another point, when you say that if the pregnancy was in all other respects perfectly normal, I have another problem. I’ve known “perfectly normal” pregnancies to end with the mother’s death during childbirth. I’ve known “perfectly normal” pregnancies to lead to post partum depression so severe, that the mother committed suicide shortly after the baby was born (and this was a wanted baby, whose parents conceived her on purpose and were very excited for her arrival). These are just people I’ve known in my life, and while their stories are anecdotes in this conversation, I think they show that seemingly healthy pregnancies can still end in disaster, and that is why people need to have every right to consent to and accept the risks of pregnancy, whether there are early warning flags in their own pregnancies or not.

You use the passive sentence structure “If it was judged” to take the subject out of this sentence. But who is the subject? Who is the one who judges whether the pregnancy is causing the mother enough trauma to allow for abortion? And why do you think that they are a better judge than the woman, who is actually the person experiencing the trauma?

This is a perfectly good question and I accept completely that this where the most difficult decision has to be made. If we are assuming that the right to life has been granted to unborn children then, to be honest, I foresee these decisions, at least initially, being brought before the courts. As you imply, someone at some point will have to decide whether there is sufficient reason to kill a very young human being who has committed no offense or done anything else to deserve being killed other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As I see it, this question of the right to life is the funadmental difference between us. For those who believe I am somehow privileging the unborn child over the mother or granting it more rights than the mother, I would point out that the mother, as an adult human being, has amongst other rights

the right to life
the right to privacy
the right to free expression
the right to practise the religion of her choice
the right to vote
the right to due process

and so on.

The unborn child, as things stand, has none of them. All I am asking for it is

the right to life.

Now tell me how that privileges the child over the mother.

My question to you would be, on what grounds would you deny the right to life to the unborn child? My argument is that the right to life applies to an individual human being, which is the totality of both the physical and mental properties that make us human. It is the right to life not the right to personality, whatever that may be. Moreover, the right to life doesn’t just mean the right to be alive at a certain point or points, it means the right to the whole of the individual’s lifespan. As I argued before, we are not just objects in three-dimensional space. We also exist over time. The life of the individual starts at conception and ends at death. There is no discontinuity in between. The right to life should guarantee the whole of that lifespan, which means it should be the right of both the mother and the unborn child.

You see, this is the whole problem we have with your position. This is why we don’t think you are seeing women as full people.

I understand that. I am saying that, on the contrary, I see women as adult human beings “with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities appertaining thereto”. What I am asking is why you refuse to acknowledge that the unborn child is both alive and a human individual. Others have alleged that the use of the term “unborn child” is an emotional appeal or rhetorical device. My counter-claim is that insistence on the use of the medical term “fetus” dehumanizes what is, by any reasonable measure, a very young human being.

You concede that there are pregnancies that should be aborted for the mother’s sake, but you won’t allow the mother herself to be involved in the decision over whether her pregnancy is one of those pregnancies. You’d rather leave it up to judges, lawyers, politicians, doctors, her father, her husband, or whoever else you are thinking of when you say other people can decide whether the trauma is too much to expect of her.

Where did I say I would not allow the mother to be involved in the decision? Of course she should be involved. However, the mother, as a lay-person, may not be the best-qualified to decide what is in her best interests medically. That’s not to say that the doctors should have a free hand. The patient should always have the final choice over what is done to them, although not to others. An unborn child is not assumed to be competent to make decisions about what is in its best interests so it must fall to adults to look after them. A parent is normally held initially to have the power to decide for the child but that does not mean he or she can act in a way that is harmful to it.

And another point, when you say that if the pregnancy was in all other respects perfectly normal, I have another problem. I’ve known “perfectly normal” pregnancies to end with the mother’s death during childbirth. I’ve known “perfectly normal” pregnancies to lead to post partum depression so severe, that the mother committed suicide shortly after the baby was born (and this was a wanted baby, whose parents conceived her on purpose and were very excited for her arrival). These are just people I’ve known in my life, and while their stories are anecdotes in this conversation, I think they show that seemingly healthy pregnancies can still end in disaster, and that is why people need to have every right to consent to and accept the risks of pregnancy, whether there are early warning flags in their own pregnancies or not.

If it were just the mother’s life we were considering I would entirely agree but taking into account the right to life of an unborn child makes things a lot more complicated. I fully accept that there are a range of health risks associated with pregnancy and I’m not trying to diminish their significance. I accept that abortion is statistically a reasonably safe procedure (for the mother at least) although even there things can go wrong. There is no escaping risk either way. But if the unborn child has the right to life, there is also no escaping our responsibility to preserve it, as far as is in our power, just as we have the same duty towards the mother.

I don’t have an easy answer for how to reconcile the interests of the mother and child where they are in conflict. If it were an extreme situation, where we have to choose between the life of the mother or that of the child then I would choose the mother. The real problem lies in the gray area, such as a pregnancy resulting from rape, where there is no detectable short- or long-term risk to the mother’s health, but where understandably it would be a traumatic imposition to force her to carry an unwanted child to term. The child, on the other hand, has done nothing to warrant killing it. It didn’t choose to be there, it didn’t force its way in, so why should it pay the ultimate penalty for something it was not responsible for?

Your wall of text is largely irrelevant and a complete waste of time as, even if unborn humans were given full status as persons THE RIGHT TO LIVE INSIDE THE BODY OF ANOTHER WOULD STILL NOT EXIST, AND THEY COULD STILL BE REMOVED, EVEN IF IT KILLED THEM

The real problem lies in the gray area, such as a pregnancy resulting from rape, where there is no detectable short- or long-term risk to the mother’s health

1. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy is not a “gray” area. It is absolute, just as every other human beings’ is absolute. You have been told this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to lie?

2. There is ALWAYS a detectable short AND long-term risk to a pregnant woman’s health. You have been tod this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to lie?

3. A fetus is not a baby until it is born. A pregnant woman is not a mother until she has given birth, or willingly chooses to accept that label earlier of her own free will. You have been told this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to use this dishonest deliberately loaded and inaccurate language.

You persistent intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking. It is testimony to the moral and ethical bankruptcy of your position that you have not once managed to argue in support of it without employing lies or other dishonest rhetorical strategies.

Seversky wants to condemn women to death for having sex. Since we cannot accurately predict which women will die from pregnancy, let alone prevent it, Seversky is essentially denying women their inalienable right to life by forcing them to gestate against their will.

No new arguments, or what is damning for their cause, no evidence presented by Seversky. In particular, no evidence of why the woman is less important than the fetus, who isn’t living in the human environment of breathing air.

However, the mother, as a lay-person, may not be the best-qualified to decide what is in her best interests medically.

Every other adult human being of sound mind gets the absolute right to decide their own medical best interests. Whether they are “best-qualified” or not is irrelevant. They get the absolute inalienable right to seek the OPINION of a more qualified expert of THEIR choosing (not the state), and they have the absolute inalienable right to CHOOSE to follow or not follow that expert’s advice.

Once more seversky, immoral wannabe slavemaster of pregnant women, wants to take away from pregnant woman the rights that every other human being has.

If it were just the mother’s life we were considering I would entirely agree but taking into account the right to life of an unborn child makes things a lot more complicated.

Maybe you should stop misrepresenting a clump of dividing cells as an unborn child. A clump of tissue does not have any rights, nor is it a child in any sense of the word until it actually has a functional nervous system and body. At no point does a potential person have rights that supercede the rights of the adult woman who is carrying the potential person. Wow, not complicated at all when you base your thinking on facts rather than bullshit.

As I see it, this question of the right to life is the funadmental difference between us. For those who believe I am somehow privileging the unborn child over the mother or granting it more rights than the mother, I would point out that the mother, as an adult human being, has amongst other rights
the right to life
the right to privacy
the right to free expression
the right to practise the religion of her choice
the right to vote
the right to due process
and so on.
The unborn child, as things stand, has none of them. All I am asking for it is
the right to life.
Now tell me how that privileges the child over the mother.

We know that you do not support abortion except in cases of rape or incest (whereupon the precious “right to life of a fetus” is kicked to the curb, showing that you’re not *THAT* concerned with that right).
Given that, if you got to run things, and a woman became pregnant, she would be forced to carry that pregnancy to term, against her wishes. That’s violating her rights. This is what you continue to refuse to acknowledge. To remain alive, a fetus has to use the body of a pregnant woman. There is no other way. So to deny a woman the right to an abortion bc of the fetus’ right to life automatically means you deny the woman’s bodily autonomy. The fetus cannot have the right to life (defined according to your misogynistic views as being so precious that a pregnant woman cannot abort it) and the woman have bodily autonomy simultaneously.

The rights are in conflict, and you’re siding with the fetus. When you do that, you deny women their agency, their rights, and their very humanity.
There is literally no scenario by which women can lose the right to have an abortion while keeping their bodily autonomy.

If you weren’t privileging the fetus, you would accept that even while pregnant, women still have bodily autonomy, which would mean they have the right to have an abortion.

You *also* fail, once again to realize that pregnancy is a health risk to women. You would force a woman to carry a fetus to term, despite all the very harmful side effects of pregnancy. You clearly are privileging a fetus over a woman.

You literally do not care about women. You only want the fetus to survive.

The child, on the other hand, has done nothing to warrant killing it. It didn’t choose to be there, it didn’t force its way in, so why should it pay the ultimate penalty for something it was not responsible for?

FFS stop projecting onto a damn fetus. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t have emotions. It won’t “regret” being killed. It isn’t a human person. It doesn’t and *shouldn’t* have human rights.
Born people have human rights.
If the answer to your ethical problem (which is no problem at all in the eyes of people who recognize that a fetus’ has no right that trumps the pregnant woman’s) is to force the woman to carry the fetus to term, that automatically violates her bodily autonomy and treats her as a human incubator with second class citizenship status. This is what you’re advocating. You care more about a fucking foetus than women.

Still waiting on you to answer why a fetus gets to trump a woman’s bodily autonomy by being able to use her body against her wishes, since no human being has the right to use another person’s body against their wishes. You’ve handily avoided answering this, but it’s at the heart of this discussion. Yes, fetuses use the body of pregnant women to survive. That is an entity using the body of a human being. No one has that right. Ever. Yet you would love to grant fetuses that right because you want to enslave women.

::snark tag activated::
I’m sure this the first time anyone has mentioned this point, but seversky, do you acknowledge that even granting a fetus the right to life does not then grant it the right to live inside a pregnant woman?

He defined “critical posture” himself as “criticizing bad ideas”. What would you call that other than a reference to critical thinking? Either way, the minute he starts using terms like “intrinsically male” and “estrogen vibe”, he’s spewing sexist horseshit.

Others have alleged that the use of the term “unborn child” is an emotional appeal or rhetorical device. My counter-claim is that insistence on the use of the medical term “fetus” dehumanizes what is, by any reasonable measure, a very young human being.

Oh it’s a “no I get to redefine words to means what I think they should mean” argument. The term fetus is not dehumanizing any more than referring to your kneecap as a patella is dehumanizing. Its a precise medical term that means not yet born but more than eight weeks gestation.

fe·tus
ˈfētəs
noun
an unborn offspring of a mammal, in particular an unborn human baby more than eight weeks after conception.

Once it is born, it is a neonate. Only after it is a month old do we call it an infant because all of these words have precise meanings that correspond to developmental stages of all mammals. Your insistence on referring to such as unborn children and babies is both factually wrong, and morally repugnant.

My argument is that the right to life applies to an individual human being.

My argument is that a fetus is not an individual. How can it be? What has it done? If you gave it a way to say its last words, what could it say? Fill in the blank: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe …. __________.”

Seriously, describe a fetus to me in a way that makes me say, “Damn! That fetus is one amazing fetus! The strength of character it must have taken to accomplish all that, is rare in a pre-born individual.” One fetus is so much like another that using the word “individual” is bizarre. The only thing unique about any fetus is its genetic material, and if the way-past-born, fully-grown individual who shares that genetic material doesn’t want it, well, it is the business of no other individual.

As for the term “being”, well, the little thing hasn’t been anything yet, and hasn’t anything to be with. Is it being brave? Is it being noble? Is it being respectful?

How can it be human, when it doesn’t have a brain? Or experiences? Seriously, does anybody remember being anything before the age of two? Age one? Before birth? I have no memories of myself before age four, and cannot attribute humanity to a four-week blot.

You keep giving us your opinion, then wanting us to discuss it. Well, we have more important issues to work on. Go away.

Yeah, the implications and the implementations are horrifying. Death panels pale in comparison.

Hey, Seversky! You already said that you would allow abortions in case of rape. So tell me, what makes it wrong for a rapist to use a woman’s reproductive organs without her consent, but right for a fetus? I mean, if somebody is trying to rape my wife, I get to kill him to stop him, right? Even you won’t allow that rapist’s fetus to keep using my wife’s reproductive organs — you will kill it, you twisted murderer.

So who gets to use her reproductive system? Without her consent? Against her will? Me, her husband? My skanky girlfriend’s aborted fetus? My wife’s sister’s fetus? Her sister’s teenage son? Her sister’s teenage daughter’s unwanted fetus?

The “right to life” that you speak of is listed only in a few documents, documents that mostly discuss men. It is not a full right of all people, except as a society agrees and defines. This society does not agree with your belief that a fetus has an infinite right to life.

As I see it, this question of the right to life is the funadmental difference between us. For those who believe I am somehow privileging the unborn child over the mother or granting it more rights than the mother, I would point out that the mother, as an adult human being, has amongst other rights
the right to life
the right to privacy
the right to free expression
the right to practise the religion of her choice
the right to vote
the right to due process
and so on.
The unborn child, as things stand, has none of them. All I am asking for it is
the right to life.
Now tell me how that privileges the child over the mother.

As has been already explained to you, over and over again, but which you in your disgusting dishonest deliberately ignore, granting the fetus the right to life immediately and automatically TAKES AWAY all those rights from the woman.

That is he unavoidable biological reality. Giving a fetus a right to life automatically renders pregnant humans less human than non-pregnant humans.

No one is actually disparaging you for privileging the child over the mother, though we know that’s what you are doing. You are being disparaged for treating pregnant women as LESS THAN HUMAN.

And I see you continuing to use the dishonest terms “child” and “mother”, you disgusting and vile liar.

Once you say this, your argument is over. You are, with prima facie evidence, doing nothing but lying and bullshitting, and everything you say will be dismissed as emotional, unscientific, and illogical fuckwittery. So, if you can’t make your argument without such lies and bullshit, don’t make it at all. Show some honesty and integrity, which is so sorely lacking from the anti-choice idjits like you.

Well, I asked seversky what the actual risk of death has to be before he deems an abortion justified, so we can calculate exactly how many women he’s willing to kill.
I’m also wondering: What does he think having to carry an unwanted pregnancy for 9 months will do to a woman’s mental health? What does he think birth is if not inflicting serious pain and harm on a woman?

Tell ya what seversky, when men are implanted with fetuses in much the way male seahorses are, and you’re required to carry one regardless of your choice, or your health, then you can talk about whether fetuses have rights to life, let alone ones that trump actual born people’s.

Valde
Your wall of text is largely irrelevant and a complete waste of time as, even if unborn humans were given full status as persons THE RIGHT TO LIVE INSIDE THE BODY OF ANOTHER WOULD STILL NOT EXIST, AND THEY COULD STILL BE REMOVED, EVEN IF IT KILLED THEM

Okay, I’ll keep it short and sweet.

I have never claimed that the unborn child – or anything else – has a “right” ot occupy or use the body of another human being at will. That is the right to privacy.

I have argued – and will continue to argue – that the unborn child, being a human individual, should have the right to life.

Your approach to abortion means that only one of the individuals involved survives. My approach to abortion, being concerned with the right to life of both parties involved, tries to ensure that both survive.

The prenate dies because it is incapable of surviving without using the woman’s body to perform all of life’s metabolic processes for it – eat, breathe, process wastes etc.

The point of abortion is NOT to kill, the point of abortion is for the woman to rid her body of something that she does not want inside her – something that can kill, maim and injure her. Something that can cause great suffering.

Abortion is simply the termination of a pregnancy – and a post-viability ‘abortion’ is, when possible, performed by inducing labour and hopefully producing a live baby. Only when this isn’t possible due to medical emergency, such as obstructed labour, is the fetus intentionally killed.

Absolutely *nothing* can be done to save a pre-viable prenate. Their hearts have holes, their lungs are nearly solid and cannot inhale air – if there was some way to preserve their lives after being removed from the woman’s body, I am sure that it would be done. But, there is no way, and, as has been repeatedly explained to you, no one owes you their body just because you really need their body to survive.

Oh, for the love of merry fuck.
Go away already, seversky. This has all been thoroughly explained to you. “What’s wrong with that” has been explained by multiple people. I would explain it to you again, but just seeing your name pop up bores me so profoundly that I can’t be bothered.
Just so you know, I lost a pregnancy at six weeks once. I spent exactly no time at all mourning this loss; my main emotion was annoyance at the painful, prolonged and inconvenient bleeding that eventually landed me with anemia and a D&C. Feel entirely free to infer what you like from these facts; in fact, do what you like, as long as you fuck off and shut up. If you can’t do that, at least fuck off.

It violates the person who owns the zygotes bodily autonomy, is based on false ideas about reproduction, and is a religious based argument. Life does not begin at conception, there is nothing special about a clump of cells even if it is a human clump of cells. The world is overpopulated and you want to make sure that every human has a chance at a life while ignoring the human who makes that possible at risk to her own life. In short, go carry a preganancy to term and go through childbirth. Otherwise your opinion on the matter is just hand-waving and stupid lies.

I have never claimed that the unborn child – or anything else – has a “right” ot occupy or use the body of another human being at will. That is the right to privacy.

Bullshit. Your implication of having a “right to life” effectively says it does. Stop lying to yourself. Only then, will you stop lying to us.

I have argued – and will continue to argue – that the unborn child, being a human individual, should have the right to life.

NO! It isn’t fully human until it is born and living in human environment without qualifying words. What part of that TRUTH don’t you want to understand. And I don’t give a shit about your ignorant, unscientific, and emotionally sloganeering opinion. Keep it elsewhere.

Your approach to abortion means that only one of the individuals involved survives. My approach to abortion, being concerned with the right to life of both parties involved, tries to ensure that both survive.

Nope, you are only intersted in the fetus. That is obvious from your inability to understand the concept of potential human versus an existing human, namely the woman. The woman always loses in your fuckwitted opinion. You can’t grasp that since you are so busy saying “killing unborn children”, and picturing what it will become, and not what it is now.
You want to reduce the number of abortions? Simple. Offer the women half the cost of raising the child to 18. At the moment that is about $250,000, so be prepared to have a check in escrow for half that amount. Put your money where your mouth is hypocrite.

I have never claimed that the unborn child – or anything else – has a “right” ot occupy or use the body of another human being at will. That is the right to privacy.
I have argued – and will continue to argue – that the unborn child, being a human individual, should have the right to life.

We know what you think you’re arguing, you ignorant fuck. What you fail to understand, no matter how much you deny it, is that arguing the latter entails the former.

My approach to abortion, being concerned with the right to life of both parties involved, tries to ensure that both survive.

Beautiful in theory, terrible in practice. We know that leaving this personal medical decision in the hands of courts and political lobbies kills women in the real world. We also know that “viability” is a poor criterion to decide whether to force labor or not. Your proposal doesn’t work. Deal with it.

“”It doesn’t matter if it’s most cases. First, it matters that individuals have rights; they aren’t based on percentages. They’re inalienable.Second, since we can’t know in advance which women will die from a complication of pregnancy or childbirth, you strip all women of their right to life. (To borrow the the language used in the article above: it’s foreseeable that women will die of complications of pregnancy and childbirth.) Perhaps you’re not stripping most women of their actual lives: but you are stripping all women of their RIGHT to life. You’re basically saying “the odds are good you’ll survive, honey, so why do you need a right to live, anyway? Let me play the odds for you. Without the slightest knowledge of you or your circumstances.”
Such hubris never ceases to amaze me. Luckily, it’s forbidden for the government to strip people of their rights like that.””-TheDingus

1. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy is not a “gray” area. It is absolute, just as every other human beings’ is absolute. You have been told this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to lie?

Human rights are not absolutes. Try reading about them. The right to free speech does not mean the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The right to life does not prevent you killing someone if they are unlawfully threatening yours. Read Roe v Wade. The right to privacy is not absolute. It’s not me that’s lying.

2. There is ALWAYS a detectable short AND long-term risk to a pregnant woman’s health. You have been tod this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to lie?

I accepted that in my previous post. How is that lying?

3. A fetus is not a baby until it is born. A pregnant woman is not a mother until she has given birth, or willingly chooses to accept that label earlier of her own free will. You have been told this time and time and time again. Why do you continue to use this dishonest deliberately loaded and inaccurate language.

Try reading what I have written. I don’t call the fetus a “baby”, I call it an “unborn child”

Merriam-Webster gives one definition of mother as “a female parent”. It is the relationship of a woman to her offspring. It doesn’t matter whether or not the child is born.

Merriam-Webster also gives one definition of “child” as “a : an unborn or recently born person”

My usages are accepted, current and accurate. Why are you denying them?

Ok, when you resort to quoting the dictionary to support your argument, it’s time to just shut the fuck up. Not that it wasn’t time to shut the fuck up about 5 rotations ago of this fucking merry go round.

I have never claimed that the unborn child – or anything else – has a “right” ot occupy or use the body of another human being at will. That is the right to privacy.

I have argued – and will continue to argue – that the unborn child, being a human individual, should have the right to life.

Your approach to abortion means that only one of the individuals involved survives. My approach to abortion, being concerned with the right to life of both parties involved, tries to ensure that both survive.

What’s wrong with that?

1. It’s plain contradictory. A fetus cannot NOT have the right to use a woman’s body against her wishes and with detrimental effects for her own wellbeing up to and including death AND simultaneously have the right to life if that life means using a woman’s body against her wishes and with detrimental effects for her own wellbeing up to and including death.

2. It’s the right to bodily autonomy that comes into play here. The right that tops the other ones.

3. You have given no evidence why it should be reasonable to subject women to torture. What crime are they guilty of that it should be reasonable to force them to go through 3 months of a painful, risky condition that end in excrutiating pain and that will leave her body permanently damaged

4. It’s frankly menschenverachtend that all you care about is survival but never ask what that means. That you would rather have a broken, sick, depressed woman and an unloved, unwanted child on a planet with fucking 7 billion people than having a happy woman who goes on with her life (probably caring for her existing children, or getting an education before she goes on to have children she can love and care for) and a dead fetus (or better said embryo, because most abortions happens before it even manages to become a fetus) that didn’t even have the capacity feel pain, much less fear or hope or anything.

You are really anti-woman and anti-children, because you obviously don’t give a fuck about either, as long as they exist.

Because you don’t think through the concept to its ultimate conclusion, which is that the decision to abort is up to the woman. Her health, her decision. DUH. You can’t see the forest for the trees.

I call it an “unborn child”

Tomaytoe, tomahto. Still confusing in utero versus ex utero, and the what the differences are. It is an oxymoron thrown out for emotional effect, and is scientifically meaningless. What part of reality do you have trouble with? Right, anything that doesn’t conform to your presuppositions.

My usages are accepted, current and accurate. Why are you denying them?

There are differences between a theory (meaning guess), and a scientific theory, meaning an idea supported by a large body of scientific evidence. Same difference with fetus. In utero, ex utero. You don’t see any difference. Scientists and ethicists do.

Seversky, you are getting nowhere, and will get nowhere until you actually quit repeating your inane and stupid opinions ad nauseum, and supply real evidence. For example. You and I stand across the street from an abortion clinic. We take pictures with normal cameras of everybody going in and out. If those going in match those coming out, no human has been killed. That is the proper conclusion of that experiment. You don’t even have to do it, just imagine doing it. You will know the answer.

Your approach to abortion means that only one of the individuals involved survives. My approach to abortion, being concerned with the right to life of both parties involved, tries to ensure that both survive.

You silly little misogynistic asspimple, fetuses are not invididuals. There you go again trying to grant personhood to a fucking fetus. Tell me again, which qualities of personhood does a fetus have?
Then after that, I’m sure you’ll get around to explaining how that fetus has the right to be inside the body of a pregnant woman and make use of her body against her wishes.

We’re apparently brainless vessels. Mental health is not health. Suicide is not a risk. Who cares if she kills herself from pst-partum depression, the all-important fetus is now a baby and safe.

Suicides following post-partum depression are tragic but, fortunately, relatively rare, roughly 3 per 100,000 births in the US according to some studies.

Are you saying that risk is sufficient to justify aborting all fetuses as a precaution?

I assume not. I’m assuming you believe the woman should have the right to decide what medical treatments she will or will not accept. If she refuses a treatment recommnded by a doctor, neither the doctor nor anyone else has the right to force it on her.

I would agree. She has the right to decide for herself>. But not for anyone else. If the unborn child is recognized as a human individual with the right to life then it is “someone else”. Since it cannot speak for itself, others must ensure that its right to life is respected wherever possible.

If a zygote is an ‘individual’ then explain how it can split into two or more twins…then, those twins can recombine forming a single zygote again? At which point does it become an ‘individual?’ Do the twins that were reabsorbed ‘die’ or what? Is a chimera, which is formed from two or more twins, two people? Does one twin die when reabsorbed? What’s the deal?

Suicides following post-partum depression are tragic but, fortunately, relatively rare, roughly 3 per 100,000 births in the US according to some studies.

The right to life is inalienable. What you are saying is that women’s lives are *only* valuable based on statistics. That women, as a whole, do not have the inalienable right to life that you claim to honour because their risks of dying are not high enough for you. Sorry, but you don’t get to determine which medical risks people should take on.

Since it cannot speak for itself, others must ensure that its right to life is respected wherever possible.

Women, however *can* speak for themselves, and they say that they have the right to their own lives, and to live those lives how they see fit.

The other thing that is wrong with this statement is that you assume that simply not having the ability to speak gives you the right to use the body of another without consent. If I am in a coma, and the ONLY way I can survive is by leeching blood from your body over a period of 9 months, I do not have a *right* to your body just because I cannot speak for myself. What a horrible argument.

What’s wrong with that, Seversky, is that you are wanting to have a discussion about a highly-unlikely possiblity, which, if true, would be impossible to deal with, and you are wanting to have this discussion in an abstract way, even though it is closely related to a highly-emotional subject, in a place where many victims of arguments like yours have asked you to go away.

Why don’t you toddle over to a Irish site, jump into a discussion of Home Rule, and ask if leprechauns should be given the vote. Or go to a veal-growers site and ask if they should name the calves. Or ask your parents why they did such a bad job of you.

Look. A fetus, or a pre-fetal mass, is not yet human. Humans actually have no right to life. If we did decide that a fetus had a right to life, it would still be up to the woman involved as to how to deal with that. Telling her that a fetus is human and that she is trampling on its right to life is a horrible thing to do to her. Telling all of us, many of whom are women, that we are wrong, is another way of saying that women are wrong, incapable and stupid, and that they have no right to their own body. Telling a woman that she has no right to her own body, after she has asked you to stop, is getting pretty close to rape, and some people here have been raped.

I would agree. She has the right to decide for herself>. But not for anyone else. If the unborn child is recognized as a human individual with the right to life then it is “someone else”.

Despite the fact that fetuses do not have personhood rights, and are not people, you persist in this damn lie.
Why are you so fucking dishonest?
Moreover, why do you refuse to acknowledge that since the fetus doesn’t have a right to be inside the body of a woman, and is infringing upon her bodily autonomy, that she can end her pregnancy at any time she chooses?
You cannot say you support a woman’s bodily autonomy whilst demanding that fetuses get a right to life that prevents them from being killed as a side effect of abortion.
It is a fact that a fetus resides with a pregnant woman.
It is a fact that the fetus uses the body of a pregnant woman to survive.
It is a fact that no human being, whether or not they are a person, has the right to use the body of, nor reside inside the body of another human being.

If you’re interested in laying the smackdown, this particular poster needs his ass handed to him on TFA. He is claiming that abortion should be banned because gay people will be killed, yes, this is his argument.

There are already markers for determining sex, and people abort fetuses for being FEMALE. It’s a logical step to assume that IF (and likely when) a marker is found for homosexuality, the unborn will be killed for that reason, too. It’ll be just another addition to the long line of HUMAN BEINGS killed because they are “undesirables.”

Maybe you should stop misrepresenting a clump of dividing cells as an unborn child. A clump of tissue does not have any rights, nor is it a child in any sense of the word until it actually has a functional nervous system and body.

Yes, the fetus is a “clump of dividing cells”. So are you. So am I. Does that “fact” entitle someone to kill us.

And “child” is just the word we use for offspring during a certain period in a much longer continuous process of development that eventually leads to an adult human being.

Yes, the fetus is a “clump of dividing cells”. So are you. So am I. Does that “fact” entitle someone to kill us.

No, a prenate really is a clump of dividing cells. They are non-sentient and non-sapient. You don’t get rights if you don’t have a brain/mind. That’s just how it is. This is why brainless babies and braindead yet still living bodies are allowed to die or have their organs harvested. They are no longer considered people.

Women are sentient and sapient. They can think, feel and suffer. A prenate can do NONE of that. They really *are* just clumps of dividing cells.

There’s a scene in one of the earlier Tarzan books where a bad man has kidnapped a baby boy, and is threatening to kill him if the baby’s mother won’t have sex with the bad man. She says to the bad man, “If that boy were to live, and grow up to be a good man, he would gladly sacrifice his life for his mother’s honor.”

I’m assuming you believe the woman should have the right to decide what medical treatments she will or will not accept. If she refuses a treatment recommnded by a doctor, neither the doctor nor anyone else has the right to force it on her.

This is abortion on demand. Why don’t you acknowledge the TRUTH?

ince it can

If it can’t speak for itself, it can be ignored. Unless you provide a signed Power of Attorney….Your arguments don’t hold water. They always run up against the reality of in utero versus ex utero. Big, big, difference: changes with birth, and they are very, very, significant. Including the piece of paper that says they are a full person….

Seversky, living things are just dividing cells. Some are just one cell, some are clumps. Some of us clumps are humans who have been places and done things that make us individual human beings. I’m the guy who picked up a moniker in Indonesia. Tony! is the person who shares his thoughts and fears so eloquently. You are the stupid pain in the ass that won’t go away. So how is an embryo a being? How is it human? How is it individual? How is it any more human than a nicely-warmed balut?

Oh it’s a “no I get to redefine words to means what I think they should mean” argument. The term fetus is not dehumanizing any more than referring to your kneecap as a patella is dehumanizing. Its a precise medical term that means not yet born but more than eight weeks gestation.
fe·tus
ˈfētəs
noun
an unborn offspring of a mammal, in particular an unborn human baby more than eight weeks after conception.

Yes, “fetus” is a medical term. One purpose of medical or scientific terminology is to objectivize what it refers to, to dissociate it from any emotional or cultural baggage.

Pro-abortionists prefer that terminology for similar reasons. Call it a “fetus” and you distance yourself from the emotional commitments we have towards children. That makes it easier to kill one if it’s unwanted. The intention is to dehumanize.

Once it is born, it is a neonate. Only after it is a month old do we call it an infant because all of these words have precise meanings that correspond to developmental stages of all mammals. Your insistence on referring to such as unborn children and babies is both factually wrong, and morally repugnant.

Yes, “fetus”, “neonate” and “infant” all medical terms referring to different stages in the development process of mammals and they apply to the young of any mammal.

But the particular mammal we are talking about in the context of the abortion debate is not a chimp or a cow or a whale, it’s a human being. Using terms like “fetus” to try and get around that awkward truth and imply that it is somehow less than human because that makes it easier to kill is also morally repugnant.

Yes, “fetus” is a medical term. One purpose of medical or scientific terminology is to objectivize what it refers to, to dissociate it from any emotional or cultural baggage.

No, you ignoramus. Zygote/embryo/fetus are developmental stages of all viviparous vertebrates. Tell me, are biologists ‘dehumanizing’ elephants when they speak of elephant embryos?

But the particular mammal we are talking about in the context of the abortion debate is not a chimp or a cow or a whale, it’s a human being. Using terms like “fetus” to try and get around that awkward truth and imply that it is somehow less than human because that makes it easier to kill is also morally repugnant.

No, what YOU are trying to do is to project all of your sad feelies onto something which is utterly incapable of thought and of suffering, and ONLY has one thing in common with the rest of us, which is DNA.

It is NOT possible to dehumanize h.sapiens DNA, because there is nothing ‘human’ about it other than the genetics.

Are you saying that risk is sufficient to justify aborting all fetuses as a precaution?

No, fuckwit, I’m saying that the person who is pregnant gets t make the decision whether she’s willing to run the risk or not. Just like with any other health condition.
But at least we know that for you those three women per 100k births is a sacrifice you’re willing to make.

Now, since apparently the woman is not allowed to seek a safe medical abortion, what is she exactly allowed to do in your book? Smoke? Drink alcohol? Drive a car? Go bungee jumping? Take medicine? How far are you willing to limit her liberty for the sake of the fetus?

Call it a “fetus” and you distance yourself from the emotional commitments we have towards children.Call it a “fetus” and you distance yourself from the emotional commitments we have towards children.

Stop pretending you give a damn about the well being of children. You’re the one who wants to force people to bring unwanted ones into the world. Do you know what it’s like to be an unwanted child? I do. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but you’re advocating in favor of it. You’re reprehensible and you need to go the fuck away.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Pro-abortionists prefer that terminology for similar reasons. Call it a “fetus” and you distance yourself from the emotional commitments we have towards children. That makes it easier to kill one if it’s unwanted. The intention is to dehumanize.

This is rich coming from someone who wants to enslave women for 9 months.

But the particular mammal we are talking about in the context of the abortion debate is not a chimp or a cow or a whale, it’s a human being. Using terms like “fetus” to try and get around that awkward truth and imply that it is somehow less than human because that makes it easier to kill is also morally repugnant.

But it’s not morally repugnant to force a pregnant women to carry her pregnancy to term against her wishes because YOU think fetii are special and have the right to use her body against her wishes?
If you weren’t arguing for enslaving women and treating them as second class citizens, this would *almost* be cute.

Now, since apparently the woman is not allowed to seek a safe medical abortion, what is she exactly allowed to do in your book? Smoke? Drink alcohol? Drive a car? Go bungee jumping? Take medicine? How far are you willing to limit her liberty for the sake of the fetus?

Why do I get the feeling the answer is “The woman should never leave the house”?

Call it a “fetus” and you distance yourself from the emotional commitments we have towards children.

Dude, check yourself. What on earth makes you think we have emotional commitments towards children? I have no emotional commitment toward children, I never wanted them, so I never had them.* If you’re speaking in a more general, societal sense, yes, I think strong, secure safety nets are a great thing, having good food available and accessible is a good thing, that sponsored childcare is a good thing, that good education is a great thing, etc. This, however, would be supporting the adults who happen to have children.

*And one of the ways I made sure of not ever having one? Yep, abortion. A fetus is not a child, not matter how much you wish to romanticize it. I took care of an unwanted pregnancy. It was not a matter of an unwanted child, because I didn’t let it get to that point. I know all about being an unwanted child. It ain’t pretty, dude.

Seversky’s emotional attachments are more important than scientific precision.

Hey, Seversky! I am actually a white guy, despite the moniker. You don’t have to ignore me.

Once again, how is an “enwombed ideal Republican” a being. What is it being? What has it been? For instance, I have been trying to get ideas through your befogged barriers — what has a “pre-voter of wombness” been doing with its time? Has it been bored? Has it been planning? Has it been wishing you would take yourself elsewhere? How can you call it a “being” when it is nothingness?

The prenate dies because it is incapable of surviving without using the woman’s body to perform all of life’s metabolic processes for it – eat, breathe, process wastes etc.

And if you compare a prenate with a neonate just how much difference is there between them? Yes, the prenate is still hooked up to the mother’s “life support system” while the neonate has transitioned to functioning on internal resources but apart from that?

The reality is that the neonate is as much dependent on the support of human adults to survive as it was before birth. Without proper care it will die just as surely as the fetus removed from the uterus. Killing the unborn an hour before birth can be called abortion or termination of pregnancy, killing the newborn one hour after birth could be murder. Yet there is very little difference in the child between the two stages

The point of abortion is NOT to kill, the point of abortion is for the woman to rid her body of something that she does not want inside her – something that can kill, maim and injure her. Something that can cause great suffering.

The point of abortion may not be to kill but the effect is usually that something living is killed and that something that is killed is an individual human being at an early stage of development. It is an individual because in these discussions we have referred to only one and I assume you are not denying that a fetus carried by a woman when she is pregnant is human.

Abortion is simply the termination of a pregnancy – and a post-viability ‘abortion’ is, when possible, performed by inducing labour and hopefully producing a live baby. Only when this isn’t possible due to medical emergency, such as obstructed labour, is the fetus intentionally killed.

And I have no problem with that approach. It tallies with what I have argued before.

Absolutely *nothing* can be done to save a pre-viable prenate. Their hearts have holes, their lungs are nearly solid and cannot inhale air – if there was some way to preserve their lives after being removed from the woman’s body, I am sure that it would be done. But, there is no way, and, as has been repeatedly explained to you, no one owes you their body just because you really need their body to survive.
Understand?

Of course I understand. The moral question still remains, however. If the fetus poses no threat to the mother, if we accept it is an individual and human and if, therefore, it is entitled to the right to life then we are bound to respect that right just as we are bound to respect the mother’s. The problem is reconciling the two when they are in conflict.

Oh, btw, seversky
I know, you don’t think much of women as actual feeling beings, how do you justify the horrible pain of childbirth? Have you gotten around to answering the question what crime the woman has commited to deserve such cruel and unusual punishment?

And if you compare a prenate with a neonate just how much difference is there between them? Yes, the prenate is still hooked up to the mother’s “life support system” while the neonate has transitioned to functioning on internal resources but apart from that?

The reality is that the neonate is as much dependent on the support of human adults to survive as it was before birth. Without proper care it will die just as surely as the fetus removed from the uterus. Killing the unborn an hour before birth can be called abortion or termination of pregnancy, killing the newborn one hour after birth could be murder. Yet there is very little difference in the child between the two stages

100% completely IRRELEVANT as abortion exists precisely because the woman’s bodily INTEGRITY is at stake. There is zero need to evict a neonate or a 15 year old from the parent’s body because they are already living separately.

Don’t invent strawmen arguments to get around my points, as I will dismiss them, and flag your for blatant intellectual dishonesty.

Of course I understand. The moral question still remains, however. If the fetus poses no threat to the mother, if we accept it is an individual and human and if

It is *always* a threat, because it is occupying her body without her consent, which IS a threat. Rape won’t actively harm you, you know. In fact, a rapist can do less damage to your body than a pregnancy. Yet we view rape as a serious crime because the victim’s body is being used against their will – forced pregnancy is no different – your body is being used/occupied without your consent.

And I will keep reminding you, if you force women to give birth, you will be denying all women the right to life, as you cannot predict or prevent women from dying due to pregnancy. You will be denying women, as a group, the right to life. Period. Full stop.

The problem is reconciling the two when they are in conflict.

There is NO conflict, because there is no right to exploit the body of another – even if your life depends upon it. If I don’t have the right to occupy your body to preserve my life, then neither does a prenate.

And if you compare a prenate with a neonate just how much difference is there between them? Yes, the prenate is still hooked up to the mother’s “life support system” while the neonate has transitioned to functioning on internal resources but apart from that?

I mean, if we ignore all those vast and significant differences, especially the one where one of them is INSIDE another human being, draining her own life support and causing no end of problems and the other one is outside of her body and an independent being that can be taken care of by anybody without them having to risk their health and life, if we really act as if we were that stupid, how are they any different apart from the all important differences between a fetus and a baby?

Seversky,
Suppose someone suffers from kidney disease and will die without a transplant? Do they have a right to compel you or me to give up a kidney? How is it that a fetus would have greater rights over the bodily autonomy of a woman?

And if you compare a prenate with a neonate just how much difference is there between them? Yes, the prenate is still hooked up to the mother’s “life support system” while the neonate has transitioned to functioning on internal resources but apart from that?

That’s the only difference that matters, as we have already told you over and over and over again.

Note the dishonest framing of the question. “Prenate” applies to the the entire period of gestation, but the only time where “just how much difference” can be said to be small enough to even remotely support seversky’s dishonest argument is in the very late term and fully healthy, which of course is when abortion no longer applies, as all such pregnancies are terminated by live induced birth.

This too has been told to the pathetic dishonest unethical wannabe enslaver of women over and over and over again. The only way he could even be a making the post @217 is by deliberately ignoring all those previous posts.

seversky:
Since in your opinion, a fetus has a right to life (and we have to allow it to live), and that life is dependent upon being inside the body of a pregnant woman, why does the fetus have the right to be inside a pregnant woman?

The right to free speech does not mean the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Actually, it does. I believe what you’re half-assedly referring to is shouting fire falsely in a crowded theater in order to create a panic – and of course you can do so, you just have to face the consequences of your actions, such as liability if people get hurt in the resulting stampede.

As for Roe, it balances the woman’s privacy right against the State’s interest in fetal life – not on the “right to life”. The balance is almost entirely in the woman’s favor in the first trimester.

Of course I understand. The moral question still remains, however. If the fetus poses no threat to the mother, if we accept it is an individual and human and if, therefore, it is entitled to the right to life

Oy, its clear you do not understand. My zygotes and my uterus are my property. what I do with them is not your business. EVER Therefore no morals are involved. My zygote, my uterus, my right to privacy, my decision. I will never concede to your false emotional argument that my zygote is an individual with rights that supercede my absolute right to bodily autonomy, simply because a sperm managed to fertilize it. There is nothing special about human lives, we are just one kind of animal that inhabits this planet. The world would in fact be a much better place for most every other life-form on earth if humans all died. (this is not an endorsement for genocide, just another cold hard fact.)

Now, since seversky is convinced that the lives and health of women as well as the pain of childbirth are a price he’s willing to make women pay (still no answer on the birth question), can he please explain why women are also required to foot the hospital bill? If this is all about the fetus and they have to do it whether they want to or not, why do they have to pay for the pleasure of experiencing horrible pain while at risk of dying?

can he please explain why women are also required to foot the hospital bill? If this is all about the fetus and they have to do it whether they want to or not, why do they have to pay for the pleasure of experiencing horrible pain while at risk of dying?

That’s also a good question to ask of the ‘no rape exception’ folks. I guess the pregnant person just has to accept xir fate for the crime of being raped whilst in possession of a uterus?

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

It can be said to be of human genetic material, or to have the potential to be a human, with enough care, feeding and education. But it cannot be a “being”, as there is nothing there to be, nor is it in any sense an individual, as it is still part of the woman’s body, and as it hasn’t done anything to make it unique.

You keep misunderstanding and ignoring, and you keep insisting on getting your way, and you keep insisting that women have no rights to their own bodies and their own decisions. You really are a frightening person.

By the way, PZ himself hasn’t said that he wants you gone, but a whole lot of regulars have. Why do you need the word of the great authority? Why can you not accept the words and feelings and wants of ordinary people? Is it because you are religious? Is it because some of us are women? Why do you keep invading this space, our space, to tell us that we are wrong, when we are pleading with you to go away? Do you not care about other people? Why do you do this to people in distress, people in their own place, people who want you to leave them alone? Why do you keep hurting people who don’t like you, who disagree with you, who won’t feed your ego? Why won’t you stop?

Yes, seversky. As Menyambal has asked, why won’t you stop? You have to know that we’re not going to agree with any of the misogynistic statements you’ve made. You have to know by now that we know you don’t understand the right to bodily autonomy, or why women should have the right to choose. We know you haven’t thought through the implications of your beliefs. This is our space, and you keep dropping your shit all over the metaphorical carpet, as if you’re going to find someone that believes you.
You’re not.
We’ve thought this through. You haven’t. You have contributed nothing that we haven’t already heard and debunked from others in the anti-abortion, misogynistic, “rah rah fetii are great” crowd. So why not take a hint and shove the fuck off? There are plenty of places on line where you can be among your fellows and discuss your hateful plans to enslave women. Such a place is not here and you are NOT welcome.

Yes, the prenate is still hooked up to the mother’s “life support system” while the neonate has transitioned to functioning on internal resources but apart from that?

You mean apart from the most fundamental and important difference, i.e., that the neonate, no longer being inside the woman, is not interfering with her bodily autonomy?

The reality is that the neonate is as much dependent on the support of human adults to survive as it was before birth.

Oh, another “WELL IF YOU CAN KILL BABEEZ INSIDE THE WOMB YOU CAN KILL THEM OUTSIDE TOO”. How original.

Abortion is the interruption of a pregnancy. Once the child is born, there is no pregnancy to interrupt. Abortion rights can’t extend to born children, because they aren’t about killing babeez, they’re about interrupting the pregnancy because the woman has rights over her own body.

Furthermore, once the child is born, they can be cared for by anyone. They’re dependent, but not on someone else’s body.

Why do you keep invading this space, our space, to tell us that we are wrong, when we are pleading with you to go away? Do you not care about other people? Why do you do this to people in distress, people in their own place, people who want you to leave them alone? Why do you keep hurting people who don’t like you, who disagree with you, who won’t feed your ego? Why won’t you stop?

Because we’re not fetuses, therefore not worthy of that kind of consideration from seversky.

I have been arguing with an asshat on Secular Pro Life Perspectives blog about baby making machines. He insists on comparing pregnancy to a baby making machine that people press for a few minutes of pleasure, but every 1/100 the machine will create a baby. If you won’t kill the baby created by the machine, then how can you kill a sweet innocent widdle emwyo???

They *really* try to sidestep the bodily autonomy issue, to handwave it away, because in the end, forced gestation is enslavement and torture for women. They must pretend it doesn’t exist.

The concept of bodily autonomy will elude them specifically if they come from a religious background – you don’t own your body, god does, or your husband, or your church.

Secular pro-lifers aren’t much different, but we must remember that 1) many come from religious backgrounds are now atheist 2) we are atheist, but we live in a religious world – we have all been subtly brainwashed with anti-sex and anti-bodily autonomy campaigns. It’s omnipresent.

Bodily autonomy is kind of an arcane concept. I was unfamiliar with it til I started getting involved in abortion conversations here. Prior to that I was pro-choice because abortion bans just don’t work. I figured abortion will happen anyway so we might as well make it safe.

On the forced birth side though I think they’re unfamiliar with it but I also think they just don’t care, especially the ones arguing from religious grounds. I think they just believe abortion is murder because that’s how they’re taught and any argument they make to support that position is simply whatever they’ve heard that seemed impressive. It’s almost exactly like arguing about the existence of gods. None of the arguments are the reason why they believe themselves and none of those arguments would work to convince them of the truth of any religion other than their own. They’re just sure they’re right because reasons. They’re not coming from a position of having actually reasoned through it themselves so there arguments aren’t really amenable to reason either.

I hate debating some pro-liars, such as Seversky, because they are incapable of reasoned thought. It’s all just memorized talking points, repeated over and over. They refuse to look at citations, at anything that will poke a hole in their bubble. Admittedly, we too use talking points, but we at least try to have an honest conversation – none of this repeating ‘but u want to murder innocent widdle baybeez so u can be a slut’ as our ONLY argument.

Exactly. They’re not doing it to actually work through the issue. They’re looking for openings to pounce with something from their arsenal of memorized talking points. They give no consideration to whether what they say at any given moment is consistent with anything they’ve said in the past. It’s like they’re playing a forced birth themed game of Mad Libs.

#250They give no consideration to whether what they say at any given moment is consistent with anything they’ve said in the past

Which makes it super easy to trap them in contradictions. Except when you do, they pretend it never happened. Every time I trap one of the stupider ones, they immediately go to brilliant Plan B which is *always*, and I mean *always* – WOULD YOU KILL A BABY IN THE BIRTH CANAL ONE MINUTE BEFORE BIRTH WELL WOULD YOU SICKO???112ELEVERNTY

“Imagine that an alien species envelops the earth in a cloud of infectious DNA, and little needles carrying embryos rain down on us.”

I’m going to call BS on your premise because, unless it’s rape, a women is FULLY cognizant that the behavior that she’s engaged in has the potential to result in pregnancy. The school system has made us all very aware of this reality.

See, here’s my problem

I don’t think that women are ignorant, helpless, victims. I believe that women are intelligent, thinking individuals who are fully capable of weighing risk for their behavior AND taking responsibility for that behavior.

Sex is designed to make babies.

And, if you screw, you are BOTH (male and female) accepting that risk.

So stop playing stupid. You know that the reason that it feels so freaking good is that this behavior is designed to keep the entire species going. You know damn well that your fun has risks.

Now be adult humans and accept that risk. Then deal with the consequences… LIKE ADULTS.

That means that YOU bear the burden of YOUR behavior. You don’t push it onto someone else.

Meaning… YOU deal with the resultant child. YOU take 20 years out of your life to raise it and don’t expect the child to sacrifice their very lives on the alter of your pleasure so you can f*** some more.

Every idiot knows that birth control will fail eventually. We have yet to outsmart mother nature. So grow up and accept the consequences. Don’t kill a kid because you’re too stupid to deal with your own ignorance and irresponsibility.

Can’t take care of the consequential child properly?

Then give it to someone who can! There are a ton of parents who are willing and able to adopt. You don’t kill the freaking kid because you’re too weak to cope. You let someone stronger and more able happily carry the load.

And, if you screw, you are BOTH (male and female) accepting that risk.

There’s your first problem.

Meaning… YOU deal with the resultant child. YOU take 20 years out of your life to raise it and don’t

There’s your second problem. There need not be a child. Who the fuck gave you permission to make that decision for somebody else. You get real first, then try logic and reason, and even better, EVIDENCE.

That means that YOU bear the burden of YOUR behavior. You don’t push it onto someone else.

Women take responsibiity when they decide to terminate the pregnancy. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?
Right, the presupposition without evidence that the fetus is more of a person than the woman. Fuck your misogynist bullshit.
Try again when your thinking matures so you can see beyond slogans and presuppositions….

Pepper Conchobhar #259
Did you notice the date of this post?
Did you notice the date of the comment immediately above your?
Did you notice that one of the logical consequences of pregnancy is abortion?

I don’t think that women are ignorant, helpless, victims. I believe that women are intelligent, thinking individuals who are fully capable of weighing risk for their behavior AND taking responsibility for that behavior.

You mean taking responsibility by considering that they could have a baby, that they don’t want one, thus deciding that getting an abortion is the most responsible choice for them?

Sex is designed to make babies.

There’s no design, because there’s no designer.

And, if you screw, you are BOTH (male and female) accepting that risk.

And since abortions exist, that risk doesn’t entail that the woman must have a baby. Which is why it’s so great that women have that choice.

So stop playing stupid. You know that the reason that it feels so freaking good is that this behavior is designed to keep the entire species going.

Our species is still going, is it not?

Meanwhile, your kind of irrational behavior seems designed to send our civilization into ruins. The real question is… do you enjoy it? Does it feel “so freaking good”?

You know damn well that your fun has risks.

So stop consuming food, because there’s a risk of developing diabetes. Own it, diabetics: it’s your own damn fault and we can’t give you healthcare because risk!!!!

Consent to sex is NOT consent to pregnancy. Consent is *always* revokable, and must be *explicit* and ongoing. Consent can always be withdrawn – consent is never a one time thing.

Sex is not ‘designed’ to make babies, sex also evolved for the purpose of social bonding. If sex was *purely* for procreation amongst humans, we would ONLY have sex when human females went into estrus, like animals. Instead, human females have hidden ovulation and are receptive at all times. No, sex exists for purposes of social bonding, and pregnancy is NOT a requirement. Also, your nose and ears were not ‘designed’ to wear glasses, so, you are disobeying nature every time you put on a pair of seeing eye or sunglasses!

Dealing with the consequences can either be choosing to gestate or having an abortion. Abortion isn’t something you personally approve of, but that’s YOUR problem, not ours. Sometimes abortion IS the smarter choice – and until it’s your life, you have absolutely no say in how another runs theirs.

And no, men do NOT take the same risk as women, as the pregnancy won’t ever KILL or DISABLE them. They don’t have to go through hours to days of painful labour, and have to shove a large object through a tiny hole!

Also, women do not exist so that they can give, preferably, white male babies to infertile couples. There are currently 100k children in the foster system – let them adopt those first!

And lastly, I suspect that you offer a rape exception, since the woman didn’t choose to have sex, like a dirty slut?

Aborting when I don’t want to have a child is taking responsibility.
Children are not something you carelessly pick up while at the store, so you might as well buy it since you already but it in the shopping cart!

Do I want a child at this moment in life? No.
Do I think I would be able to take proper care of a child at this moment in life? No.
Do I want to go through pregnancy to then send the child to an unreliable future of orphanages and foster families? No.
Would pregnancy screw up my life at this moment in time? Yes.

Then the responsible decision for me would be to abort.

That means that YOU bear the burden of YOUR behavior. You don’t push it onto someone else.

Can’t take care of the consequential child properly?
[…]
Then give it to someone who can!

The act is DESIGNED, biologically, to make babies. We ALL know that. We’re all grown. Stop playing stupid. Sex = babies. And every time you f***, you risk making a baby. That is the truth.

REALLY don’t want a baby? There’s an easy way to prevent that.

DON’T F***! I promise you that there won’t be any babies!

Argument: “You can’t make a choice for somebody else’s body”

BUT: YOU are saying that any woman can make the choice to murder the f***out of another person’s body because it’s inconvenient.

Lesser of the two crimes… MURDER or inconvenience…? I’d go with inconvenience being the lesser of the two crimes vs murdering the f*** out of someone else’s body.

Worse, YOU FREAKING *INVITED* THEM INTO YOUR HOUSE BY F***ING SOMEONE. YOU did this. YOU created the life. Now you want to murder the f*** out of them because you don’t *really* want them there?

How is this not YOU ‘making the choice for someone else’s life’??? YOU’RE LITERALLY TAKING THEIR F***ING LIFE!

Just sayin’.

Here’s the disconnect.

You guys are not willing to accept that sex makes babies. Yet, we all know of someone for whom birth control fails. Sex is designed to make babies. That’s why it feels so damn good. Sex = babies. Birth control is not infallible. Don’t want babies – don’t f***. Period.

We ALL see it, every day. We ALL know someone for whom birth control fails. We know it’s a risk.

Then we want to murder-f*** the hell out of a person just because WE made the mistake.

Grow the hell up. Accept responsibility. Either have it or give it to someone who can do a better job, but you do not have the right to create a child and murder it because you didn’t ‘mean to’ make it.

To all you White Knights out there that are arguing for a ‘women’s right to choose’…

Yeah. You bastards.

I see through you.

You want to get your nut off at the experience of women’s consciousness.

Admit it.

It’s so much easier for YOU if the woman just get’s rid of the consequence of *your* mistake. You don’t have to deal with her guilt or health issues. You got your nut. You don’t have to pay for the kid for 18 years.

Hell. If I were a man, I’d be happy if the woman got an abortion, too.

All you feminists… by advocating for ‘women’s rights’ to an abortion, you’re advocating for men’s abuse and irresponsibility.

Thanks, b*tches.

You’re perpetuating the idea that women are too stupid NOT to f***. You are the ones devaluing women. Treating us like animals who have no self control.

You’re playing right into the White Knight’s hands.

Stop that.

I, for one, am not a dog. I have self control. I can choose my sexual outlet with thoughts of the consequences, because I am NOT an in-heat breeding bitch. I’m a thinking human being who has the power of choice – every step of the way.

And anyone who denies MY ability to think, to choose, to control my body, is a sexist bastard who thinks of me as no more than a pitiful animal, at the mercy of hormones and biology.

BUT: YOU are saying that any woman can make the choice to murder the f***out of another person’s body because it’s inconvenient.

(1) Who is this other peson being “murdered”?

(2) You want to pretend the foetus is a person, with all the rights pertaining thereto, okay… Show me one single other circumstance in which you would state that one person has the right to the use of another person’s body. In fact, you are granting this hypothetical person more rights than you would grant to any other person. Why? And why do those rights override the rights of the person whose body is being hijacked for that foetal-person’s use?

Sex also leads to abortions – 20pct fail to implant, and a futher 80pct spontaneously abort.

Sex leads to abortions, dumbass.

How is this not YOU ‘making the choice for someone else’s life’??? YOU’RE LITERALLY TAKING THEIR F***ING LIFE!

So what. They have no right to the pregnant person’s body, even if their very life depends upon it. Needing something doesn’t entitle you to it, if that was the case bone marrow donation would be MANDATORY to save the lives of dying 5 year olds.

YOU are saying that any woman can make the choice to murder the f***out of another person’s body because it’s inconvenient.

Let’s stand across from an abortion clinic, and take pictures of all people going in and out. At the end of the day, everybody that can be photographed went in, and came out. No people were murdered by REAL EVIDENCE. So, where is your evidence that a fetus is more of a person than a woman? YOU DON’T HAVE ANY….

I’d go with inconvenience being the lesser of the two crimes vs murdering the f*** out of someone else’s body.

It isn’t your body, so YOU DON’T MAKE THAT DECISION FOR SOMEBODY ELSE. Your bodily autonomy only extends to you, not to anybody else.

How is this not YOU ‘making the choice for someone else’s life’??? YOU’RE LITERALLY TAKING THEIR F***ING LIFE!

Again, show me the photograph from across the street of this “person” being murdered. If you can’t, you can’t prove a crime. Only presuppose one.

Accept responsibility.

They do. Just not by your fuckwitted, presuppositional, and evidenceless slogans. By using their brains, and looking beyond your slogans to reality.
When you mature in your thinking, you will realize you are full of shit.

I will apologize for my slur against everyone who cannot see the disconnect with their philosophy and reality.

And so I ask you… After my slur… do you have ONE rational argument against my actual comments?

Anything?

Sex was biologically designed to make babies. That’s why we like it.

How is it alright to make the choice to murder the hell out of someone alright just because they put you out some?

And, if it’s cool to reject your offspring, shouldn’t men have the same rights? Why can’t dad’s walk away just because they didn’t mean to make a baby when they screwed? Why don’t men have the same right to murder that women do?

If that kid means nothing unless the mom wants it to, then the dad should have some say too.

After my slur… do you have ONE rational argument against my actual comments?

Your main fallacy is presupposing what a fetus is, is a child. Which happens only after BIRTH. You also ignore a woman’s bodily autonomy, and you elevate the fetus to a position of personhood higher than the woman. By physical evidence, the woman will always be able to be shown to be a full human being with rights, unlike your fetus.

How is it alright to make the choice to murder the hell out of someone alright just because they put you out some?

Major fallacy I listed above is why this claim is dismissed. It is presented without evidence, and is dismissed without evidence. You have nothing.

If that kid means nothing unless the mom wants it to, then the dad should have some say too.

Show me where the fetus is within his body, or can be maintained within his body. Or, you are a misogyist fuckwit trying to lower the status of women to subhuman incubators…..

Because no one – person or mindless embryo – has the right to occupy and use the body of another without explicit and ongoing consent – even if their very lives depend upon it.

The embryo dies precisely because it cannot survive without use of the woman’s organs to perform all of life’s necessary functions. Organs that has NO claim on. Just because a dying 5 year old might *need* your kidney, does not entitle that 5 year old to your kidney, even if they will die without it.

I will apologize for my slur against everyone who cannot see the disconnect with their philosophy and reality.

And so I ask you… After my slur… do you have ONE rational argument against my actual comments?

Anything?

Sex was biologically designed to make babies. That’s why we like it.

Again: No it wasn’t designed for anything.

Personally I like it for many reasons. Intimacy, orgasms, exercise… And let’s face it, it doesn’t use electricity and often cuts down on the heating bills.

How is it alright to make the choice to murder the hell out of someone alright just because they put you out some?

Stop saying that. We got your point and dismissed it the first time. Repeating it is merely wearing your keyboard out to no purpose.

And, if it’s cool to reject your offspring, shouldn’t men have the same rights? Why can’t dad’s walk away just because they didn’t mean to make a baby when they screwed? Why don’t men have the same right to murder that women do?

Well now, when men can get pregnant, men may have this choice.

If that kid means nothing unless the mom wants it to, then the dad should have some say too.

Y’know, in most relationships, they do. Their tends to be discussion. That’s kinda part of what makes it a relationship, dontcha know.

Strangely, rape victims are less likely to abort than women who have voluntary, accidental pregnancies, because they empathize with the baby. They understand that both of them were victims and are more likely to let the kid live.

See, this is where you anti-abortionists always show your true face – it’s about treating women like shit. Fuck any hypothetical children, you don’t care about them.
It’s all about your low opinion of women.

I discover that it’s at my disadvantage and it’s going to cost me money!

I want out!

If you don’t let me out of that contract… it’s slavery!

(I really do need to call my black friends in on this. They might have some ideas on ‘slavery’ that you don’t agree to. Namely that you deny the baby basic human rights… THAT would be slavery.)

BTW… did you know that black babies are aborted at a much higher rate than whites? Did you know that, had black babies not been aborted, blacks would be the majority of our population now? Are you against blacks gaining in population? I know that I’m not.)

That is to say, no one here is impressed with the ‘facts’ someone pulled out of their ass and smeared on a forced-birth advocate’s abusive sign, no matter whether you shout them or asterisk them or whatever silly contortions you’re interested in performing.

Baby is not fetus; fetus is not person. Acorn is not tree; egg is not chicken. Forest is not house.

Except people don’t sign a contract when they have sex. A woman doesn’t ‘consent’ to sign away her bodily autonomy when she chooses to have sex, no more than you ‘consent’ to a broken leg when you go skiing, or ‘consent’ to an intestinal parasite if you drink bad water.

They might have some ideas on ‘slavery’ that you don’t agree to. Namely that you deny the baby basic human rights… THAT would be slavery

How cute. I will point out that during antebellum slavery, black women were traded like livestock, raped, and forced to gestate and birth against their will. Yes, forced birth WAS a part of slavery, and YOU are the ethical heir to the slavers, not us.

did you know that black babies are aborted at a much higher rate than whites? Did you know that, had black babies not been aborted, blacks would be the majority of our population now? Are you against blacks gaining in population? I know that I’m not

You do not speak for blacks. In fact, blacks have HIGHER abortion rates because they get pregnant at a far greater frequency than whites or other minorities.

To quote Judge Judy, “show me that in writing”. Your opinion is dismissed without evidence otherwise.

Namely that you deny the baby basic human rights… T

Ah, back to the presuppositional and fuckwitted fallacy, that what it is after birth, with all the changes involved with birth like these. If you can’t show evidence that the fetus is more of a worthy human than the woman you are a liar and bullshitter. But, then, all anti-choice sloganeers like you are….
Evidence isn’t you word. It is third party science to back up your claims. Your word alone is dismissed as dogma….

A sex drive would be inherently advantageous to a species because it would produce more offspring.

Producing more offspring is actually not nearly as important as proper pair and social bonding. Because simply giving birth is meaningless when it comes to the propagation of your genes, because your genes will go NOWHERE unless your offspring survive to reproductive age. Sex keeps couples together, and in fact, having more children than one can feed is in fact counterproductive, and can harm the chances of your offspring ever reaching reproductive age if resources are spread too thin.

You should probably stop talking now, because you are an ignorant fuckwit.

It doesn’t design anything, it doesn’t “make” anything happen. It just happens. Things that are advantaged reproduce a little more often. Maybe they eventually displace other forms of their own kind, by being better at surviving to breeding age. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they overbreed, and in their Malthusian crash, get outcompeted by something else new.

But there’s no fucking design, no designer, no thought process involved on ‘evolution’s’ part. It just happens.

And not one of you has addressed how abortion dehumanizes women. How the abortion provokers see women as animalistic creatures, unable to control their most basic biological urges…

Those poor women… they have no choice but to bend over and cock their tails. The consequences are not their own! They’re just base animals, out of control of their own behavior…

… sigh.

I wish that women were people too! I wish that we had a *choice*! I wish that we could stop sex! That we had the intelligence to choose good mates. Oh! How I wish that women had brains! I wish that we were better than animals and that we could UNDERSTAND that the act of sex can make babies! If only we could wrap our itty-bitty brains around that concept! If only we could stop screwing! If only we had the ability to connect the act of SEX with procreation! If ONLY we weren’t so dumb! And even if we could… (sigh!) we still don’t have the ability to stop ourselves. I mean, WHO could expect a woman to say “no” to sex? We’re just dumb animals, after all! Proper stimulation and we lay right down.

Of course we aren’t responsible for ourselves. We’re just ‘women’ after all…

Allowing women reproductive freedom – when, or if, to have children, doesn’t dehumanize them. What dehumanizes women is denying them reproductive choice and treating them like easy bake ovens. A single errant sperm should not have the power to destroy a woman’s life.

For anti-choicers, the fact that someone can make a baby means that making babies is what she is for. People mistake the term “objectification” to mean “looking at with lust,” but what it actually means is “reducing someone to an object to be used.” Sexual objectification is assuming that because women turn you on, they are for sex, instead of a person whose sexuality should be an expression of their agency. What anti-choicers engage in is reproductive objectification. Women are among an array of objects to be used. The refrigerator is for storing food. The bookshelf is for holding books. The woman is for making babies. You no more give her a choice in the matter than you would give your refrigerator veto power over what food it hold because it didn’t like your method of shopping. <-Amanda Marcotte

And Pepper, what is the difference between a baby created through rape and one created through consensual sex? Can you tell us?

It’s already been pointed out, but in case you missed it, you revealed that you are a liar when you made the exception for raped women. If you really believed a fetus was a baby and so abortion was murder, you could not make that exception. You make that exception because really, all “pro-life” activism is about punishing women for voluntarily having sex while not wanting to become pregnant.

How the abortion provokers see women as animalistic creatures, unable to control their most basic biological urges…

Of course I can. I can have sex or I can not have sex. If I get pregnant I can have an abortion or I can not have an abortion.
A whole lot of high-level thinking going on there. And choices I can make. I love those. Choices. Part of what you say about us not being “just” animals, those are.

So… did I miss where you explained why you are ok with rape victims committing murder?

Claim made without evidence, dismissed without evidence. Whereas letting them decide their bodily autonomy is definitely allowing them to be human….

I wish that we could stop sex!

Yep, YOU have the problem, not us. You don’t want sex….

We’re just dumb animals, after all! Proper stimulation and we lay right down.

That isn’t your problem fuckwitted loser. You problem is with allowing women to decide their bodily autonomy, and get rid of the non-baby occupying their uterus that gives you fits.
You can’t/won’t provide evidence that what is removed is more human than they are. Your unevidenced claims that it is, is dismissed without evidence.
So, why are you still posting utter and total unevidenced stupidity?

DAZ: “Why are you, by giving the foetus the right to the use of another’s body, extending more rights to this supposed foetal-person than you would to any other person?

How do you justify your claim that those rights override the right to autonomy of the person whose body is being made use of?”

I use ‘all caps’ because i don’t know how to make italics on this forum. Honestly, it comes across much smoother on youtube and FB… (That was a joke… in case you don’t get jokes)

I do appreciate your logic and your humor. ;-)

Alright… so. My son was diagnosed with t-1 diabetes. I was responsible for feeding him the correct nutrients (beyond the educational level of the average nurse) and for giving him the proper injections. I was already responsible for his education. The united states government stated that I was responsible and that I could be charged with a crime if I did not provide heroic efforts to keep my child alive.

So, where does that responsibility begin?

When the baby’s born?

But then you’ve got babies born at 23 weeks and aborted at 26… Where’s the line? Why is the 23 week fetus worth saving, but the 26 week old is forfeit?

We always bring it back to the right of the woman to choose… that it’s her body… but we discount the ability of the woman to understand that sex = babies and to *really* make the choice to protect herself.

Either don’t have sex, or be very, very careful about the men that you have sex with. Don’t have sex without commitment. Don’t have sex with a guy who cannot provide. *Choose* your mates. (<– see! I avoided all caps and still put emphasis on the words! I'm a woman and I am capable of *learning*! Look at that…!)

But then you’ve got babies born at 23 weeks and aborted at 26… Where’s the line? Why is the 23 week fetus worth saving, but the 26 week old is forfeit?

If the woman say “no more pregnancy”, end of story. Her bodily autonomy beats your stupidity every day of the week. And it isn’t a baby until it is born. Fetus =/= baby, except in the minds of delusional fools like you.

but we discount the ability of the woman to understand that sex = babies and to *really* make the choice to protect herself.

Who gives you the right to make the decision for any other woman to fuck if she so desires? Who the fuck are you to tell anybody else anything? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

Your “sarcasm” @307 is only too revealing: you have complete contempt for women who choose to have sex when they do not want to become pregnant, and so you want to punish them for it by enslaving them.

I didn’t ask about your responsibility as a parent. Nor did I ask about your country’s laws regarding that. I didn’t mention that you have the right to give your child up for adoption should you so wish either; but that’s okay, as you conveniently forgot to mention that either.

What I did ask about was your assignment of relative rights to a woman and an alleged foetal-person. Why did you not address my questions regarding that. You certainly quoted them.

Again:
Why are you, by giving the foetus the right to the use of another’s body, extending more rights to this supposed foetal-person than you would to any other person?

How do you justify your claim that those rights override the right to autonomy of the person whose body is being made use of?

—————————————-
emphasis: <em>text to be italicised</em> produces text to be italicised
strong emphasis: <strong>text to be bolded</strong> produces text to be bolded

Pepper Conchabhar,
You are not going to get away with not answering the question: if abortion is murder, why is it permissable if the pregnancy is a result of rape? You won’t answer this question because it would reveal you as the liar you are, but you already revealed that.

Since Men are the ones that God has designated to BeInCharge,
it is on them to do the conception prevention.
No matter how much the slut woman wants it, just say “No.”
Easy, right?
or mandatory vasectomies at the age of 12

It’s all about blame, isn’t it? Pepper, you’re sooo ready to blame people for having dirty sex and having fun doing it. Why should women not be allowed to have a abortion if they feel the need to have one? Please note, the vast amount of abortions occur at early stages of pregnancy. Waving red herrings about ‘ripping babies arms and legs off” doesn’t make your argument creditable. Viable babies are virtually never killed after an induced early birth. It’s a fallacy that you’re trying to stand up as a guilt trip.

That’s because it doesn’t. In fact, being able to control one’s reproduction with modern technology is about the most humanizing thing I can think of.

How the abortion provokers see women as animalistic creatures, unable to control their most basic biological urges…

“Abortion provokers”? I was going to make an observation that no family planning center ever tries to influence a woman’s choice to have an abortion one way or the other, thinking that you have some weird cartoon idea of what abortion providers are like, but I don’t think you’re even at that level of thinking.

Those poor women… they have no choice but to bend over and cock their tails.